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LECTURES 



TO 



YOUNG MEN, 



ON 



VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS 



BY HENRY WARD BEECHER, 

Brooklyn. L. I. 



WneUentU STEousanfc, 



BOSTON: SALEM: 

JOHN P. JEWETT, D. BRAINERD BROOKSi, 

23 Cornhill. 193 Essex Strt«t, 

NEW YORK: 

M. H NEWMAN & CO. 

1851, 






Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred 
and forty-four, by HENRY WARD BEECHER, in the clerk's office of the 
District of the United States, within and for the District cf Indiana 






STEREOTYPED BY 

GEORGE A. CURTIS; 

NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. 



TO 

LYMAN BEECHER, D. D. 

To you I owe more than to any other living being. In 
childhood, you were my Parent ; in later life, my Teacher ; 
in manhood, my Companion. To your affectionate vigilance 
I owe my principles, my knowledge, and that I am a Min- 
ister of the Gospel of Christ. For whatever profit they derive 
<rom this little Book, the young will be indebted to you. 






PREFACE. 



Having watched the courses of those who seduce the young — 
their arts, their blandishments, their pretences ; having wit- 
nessed the beginning and consummation of ruin, almost in the 
same year, of many young men, naturally well disposed, whose 
downfall began with the appearances of innocence ; I felt an 
earnest desire, if I could, to raise the suspicion of the young, 
and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are, with 
such facility, destroyed. 

I ask every young man who may read this book, not to 
submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I denounce, 
nor blindly to follow me ; but to weigh my reasons, that he 
may form his own judgment. I only claim the place of a com- 
panion ; and that I may gain his ear, I have sought to present 
truth in those forms which best please the young ; and though 
I am not without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise, my 
whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent sympathy 
of young men. 



PREFACE 

TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



It is proper to remark, that many of the statements in these 
Lectures, which may seem severe, or overdrawn, in New Eng- 
land, are literally true in the West. Insensibility to public 
indebtedness, gambling among the members of the Bar, the 
ignoble arts of Politicians, — I know not if such things are found 
at the East, — but within one year past an edition of three 
thousand copies of these Lectures has been distributed through 
the West, and it has been generally noticed in the papers, 
and I have never heard objections from any quarter, that the 
canvass has been too strongly colored. 



1* 



CONTENTS 



LECTURE I. 

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, > 16 

LECT URE II. 

TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY, tt 

LECTURE III. 

SIX WARNINGS, *> 

LECTURE IV. 

THE PORTRAIT GALLERY, 105 

LECTURE V. 

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING, 136 

LECTURE VI. 

THE STRANGE WOMAN, 170 

LECTURE VII. 

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, 21fi 



EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION. 



OPINIONS OF DISTINGUISHED LITERARY MEN. 
[From Wm. H. McGuffey, Professor at Woodward College, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
" Mr. Beecher sketches character with a masterly hand ; and the 
Id, as well as the young, must bear witness to the truth and fidelity 
of his portraits. I would recommend the book to the especial atten- 
tion of those for whom it was designed, and hope that the patronage 
extended to this may encourage the author to make other efforts 
through the press, for the promotion of enlightened patriotism and 
sound morals. " 

[From D. H. Allen, Professor at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
" "We have a variety of books designed for young men, but I know 
of none worth half as much as this. It will be sure to be read, and 
if read, will not be easily forgotten ; and the young man who reads 
and remembers it, will always have before him a vivid picture of the 
snares and pitfalls to which he is exposed. Every youth should pos- 
sess it. Every father should place it in the hands of his sons. It should 
be in every Sabbath School Library, on board every Steam-boat, in every 
Hotel, and wherever young men spend a leisure hour." 

[From Dr. A. Wylie, President of the Indiana University, at Bloomington.] 
" The indignant rebukes which the author deals out against that 
spirit of licentiousness which shows itself in those frivolous works 
which he mentions, and which are corrupting the taste as well as 
the morals of our youth, have my warmest approbation. That the 
genius and wit of Addison himself should be set aside for the trash 
of such works is lamentable : it is ominous. 

" The warnings which Mr. Beecher has given on the subject of 
amusements are greatly needed: and his satire on that of 'repu- 
diation,' no less. 

" In short the book deserves a place on the shelf of every house- 
holder in the land, to be read by the old as well as the young." 



8 NOTICES OF THE 

[From Dr. C. White, President of Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana.] 
"Rev. H. W. Bcecher's Lectures follow a long series of elaborate 
and able works addressed to young men by some of our best wri- 
ters. It is no small merit of this production that it is not less 
instructive and impressive than the best of those which have prece- 
ded it, at the same time that it is totally unlike them all. Mr. 
Beecher has given to young men most important warnings, and 
imost valuable advice with unusual fidelity and effect. Avoiding 
the abstract and formal, he has pointed out to the young the evils 
and advantages which surround them, with so much reality and 
vividness, that we almost forget we are reading a book instead of 
looking personally into the interior scenes of a living and breathing 
community. These lectures will bear to be read often." 

[From Hon. John McLean, Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.] 
"I know of no work so admirably calculated, if read with atten- 
tion, to lead young men to correctness of thought and action, and I 
earnestly recommend it to the study of every young man who desires 
to become eminently respectable and useful." 

[From E. W. Sehon, General Agent Am. Bible Society for the West.] 
" The intention of the author is well preserved throughout this 
volume. We commend the book for its boldness and originality of 
thought and independence of expression. The young men of our 
country cannot too highly appreciate the efforts of one who has thus 
nobly and affectionately labored for their good." 

[From James H. Jerkins, Pastor of the Unitarian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
" I have read Mr. Henry W. Beecher' s lectures to young men 
with a great deal of pleasure. They appear to me to contain advice 
better adapted to our country than can be found in any similar work with 
which I am acquainted ; and this advice is presented in a style far 
better calculated than that common to the pulpit, to attract and 
please the young. I should certainly recommend the volume to any 
young man of my acquaintance as worthy of frequent perusal, and 
trust our American pulpit may produce many others as pleasing 
and practical." 

[From T. R. Cressy, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
"There is so much ignorance among good men in general, in all 
our cities and large towns, of the astonishing prevalence of vice, espe 



FIRST EDITION. V 

cially of licentiousness and of its procuring causes ; and there is 
such a false delicacy on the part of those who know these things, to 
hold them up to the gaze of the unsuspecting, that this 'book will 
not pass for its real worth. But it is a valuable work. It speaks 
the truth in all plainness. It should be in every family library ; every 
young man should first read and then study it." 

[From J. Blanchard, Pastor of the Fifth Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
"The book is both pleasing and profitable: filled with vivid 
sketches and delineations of vice ; weighty instructions, pithy senti- 
ments, delicate turns of thought, and playful sallies of humor j and 
in style and matter is admirably adapted to the tastes and wants of 
the class for whom it is written." 

[From T. A. Mills, Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
" The matter of this work is excellent and the style striking and 
I attractive. The dangers of young men are vividly portrayed, and 
• much moral instruction given. Many of the popular errors of the 
present day are handled as they deserve. No young man can read 
the book attentively without profit, and its perusal would prove 
. advantageous even to those who are immersed in the cares and 
business of life. It will need no recommendation after it becomes 
j known. 11 
[From S. W. Lynde, Pastor of the Ninth Street Baptist Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] 
" The Lectures to Young Men, by H. W. Beecher, appear to be 
well adapted to usefulness, and worthy of an extensive circulation." 

[From the Indiana State Journal.] 

" We have no doubt that these Lectures, as read, will produce a 
powerful impression. #####• 

"The pictures which glow from the hand of the artist arrest 
the eye, (so admirable is the style and arrangement,) nor will the 
interest once aroused slacken, until the whole sketch shall be con- 
templated. And the effect of the sketch, — like that of a visit to the 
dens of iniquity shorn of their blandishments, — cannot fail to be of 
the most wholesome admonitory character." 

[From the Daily Cincinnati Gazette.] 
" To find anything new or peculiar in a work of this kind, now- 
adays, would indeed be strange. In this respect we were agreeably 
surprised in looking over the book before us. The subjects, though 



10 NOTICES OF THE FIRST EDITION. 

many of them are common-place, are important and handled in a 
masterly manner. The author shows himself acquainted with the 
world, and with human nature, in all its varying phases. He writes 
as one who has learned the dangers and temptations that beset the 
young, from personal observation, and not from hearsay." 

[From the Ohio State Journal, Columbus, Ohio.] 
" The garb in which the author presents his subjects, makes them 
exceedingly attractive, and must make his Lectures very popular, 
when the public shall become acquainted with them. When deliv- 
ered, it was not the design of the accomplished author to publish 
them ; but at the earnest solicitation of a number of prominent cit- 
izens of Indiana, who were convinced that they w r ould have a highly 
beneficial influence in arresting the progress of vice and immorality, 
he prepared them for the press, and they are now published in a 
cheap and neat form ; the typography being highly creditable to the 
Western press." 

[From the Baptist Cross and Journal, Columbus, Ohio.] 
" It is an excellent book, and should be in the hands of every 
young man, and of many parents. But few of those who are 
anxious to place their sons in large towns and cities, are aware of 
the temptations which beset them there, or of the many sons thus 
placed, who are unable to withstand these temptations. This work 
will open their eyes, and place them on their guard. It is written in 
a popular, captivating style, and is neatly printed. It goes right at 
the besetting sins of the age, and handles them without gloves. It 
ought to be extensively circulated." 

[From the Cincinnati Daily Herald.] 

"Mr. Beecher looks at things in his own way, and utters his 
thoughts in his own style. His conceptions are strong, his speech 
direct and to the point. The work is worthy of anybody's perusal. 

" One thing more before we leave this book. It is entirely prac- 
tical, and specially appropriate to the times — and its views, so far as 
we can speak from our own perusal, are just, and very forcible." 

[From the Louisville Journal.] 
" It is the most valuable addition to our didactic literature that 
has been made for many years. Let all get it and read it care- 
fully." 



HTERARY NOTICES TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



[From the Olive Branch ] 
"Beecher's Lectures to Young Men. — One of the most able, 
interesting and really useful worlds for young men is the volume of 
lectures addressed to them, by Henry Ward Beecher. Every young 
man should have a copy of it. The second edition is now before 
the public, published by John P. Jewett & Co., Salem.'' 

[From the New York Commercial Advertiser.] 
"We have received l Lectures to Young Men on Important Sub- 
jects,' by the Rev. H. W. Beecher, the second edition of a work that 
has already effected much good, and, we trust, is destined to achieve 
still more. The subjects are practical, such as concern all young 
men especially at the present day. The sentiments of the writer 
are put forth with much conciseness and vigor of style, for Mr. 
Beecher writes like one in earnest. We could wish that every 
young man had the book put into his hands — especially every youth 
whose avocation or choice may lead him to reside in any of the 
larger cities of the Union." 

[From the Christian Observer, Philadelphia.] 
"Beecher's Lectures to Young Men. — This is a new edition 
of an approved and excellent book, which it affords us pleasure to 
recommend to young men in every part of the country. The 
author's thoughts, style, and manner, are his own ; and his vivid 
sketches of the evils and advantages which surround the young, are 
replete with important counsels and valuable instruction." 

[From the Christian Mirror, Portland, Maine.] 
""We have read the whole, and do not hesitate to endorse the 
strong recommendations of Western Presidents and Professors of 
Colleges, Judge McLean, and numerous clergymen, Presbyterians, 
Baptists, and Unitarians. Professor Allen, of Lane Seminary, 
* knows of no book designed for young men worth half so much as 
this.' President Wylie says, it l deserves a place on the shelf of 
every household in the land.' President White says, « it is not less 
instructive than the best of those which have preceded it, at the 



i 



12 NOTICES OF THE 

same time that it is totally unlike them all/ Judge McLean 
< knows of no work so admirably calculated to lead young men to 
correctness of thought and action.' We might copy other testimo- 
nies agreeing with these, but it is not necessary. Characters and 
qualities, whether for warning or imitation, are drawn with uncom- 
mon graphic power and justness of delineation, as any one may 
satisfy himself who will turn to t the picture gallery/ and survey 
the full length portraits of the Wit, the Humorist, the Cynic, the 
Libertine, the Demagogue, and the Party-man. Would that every 
family might procure and peruse it." 

[From the Christian Citizen.] 

"Lectures to Young Men — By Henry Ward Beecher. This 
is a volume of good strong Saxon thoughts, which no young man 
can read without thinking the like. The author talks right into the 
avocations of every-day life, as if he had been there himself, and 
were not dealing in kid glove theories of life and duty. Young 
men, you had better buy that book ; it costs but little, and it will be 
worth a hundred dollars a year to you if you read it in the right 
way.* 

Highly recommendatory notices appeared in the New York Evan- 
gelist, New York Observer, Christian World, Christian Register, 
Christian Watchman, &c, &c. We have not the papers to copy 
them from. 

[From the Christian Reflector, Boston.] 

"This is a ' young man's manual/ to the purpose. It treats of 
the most important subjects, with simple directness, and yet with the 
hand of a master. There are thousands of young men in Boston 
who would read it with profit and interest, and not a few whom its 
perusal might save from 'the yawning gulf of corruption and ruin. 7 
This is the second edition of a work first published at Cincinnati, 
md already honored with the cordial approbation of many distin- 
guished men. It is a handsomely printed volume of moderate size, 
jages 250. Mr. Beecher dedicates the work to his honored father, 
Oyman Beecher, D. D. Let every young man secure this book, and 
read it." 

[From the Portland Transcript.] 

"Beecher's Lectures to Young Men. — In handling his subjects 
the author has a peculiar style. There is a freshness and originality 



THIRD EDITION. 13 

about it that at once arrests attention. He writes with an ungloved 
hand, — presents truth, as truth should be presented, — naked. What- 
ever there is beautiful, whatever hideous about her, there she stands, 
a mark for all to gaze at. We have vices enough in New England 
which need rebuking and reforming. There are none so virtuous 
who may not be profited by these lectures. They are addressed to 
the young men particularly, yet the aged may glean from them 
many a useful lesson. We commend the work heartily to all. It is 
not a dry, abstract treatise on morals ; but highly practical through- 
out. The pictures presented are life-like, — flesh and blood portraits. 
The illustrations are apt and happy, while an occasional vein of 
humor comes in as a very agreeable seasoning. The author writes 
like one in earnest, like one who feels the importance of the duty he 
has assumed. A better work for the young we have rarely read." 

[From the Daily Evening Transcript, Boston.] 
"These Lectures abound in important and impressive truths, 
expressed in clear and pungent language. Mr. Beecher's style is 
remarkable for compactness and forcibleness. He occasionally 
thunders and lightens, but it is to arouse young men to the dangers 
to which they are exposed. There is a freshness and vivacity about 
his thoughts and language which must interest as well as instruct 
and warn the young. We would that every young man in our 
city, — yea, in our country, — had a copy of these lectures in his hands. 
They can scarcely fail to interest every intelligent reader, nor to 
Denefit every young man not lost to a sense of duty, not blind to 
danger, not in love with vice." 

[From the Advocate of Moral Reform, New York.] 
"Beecher's Lectures to Youno Men. — Wherever this book is 
known, it is regarded of superlative worth. In our judgment no 
young man should enter upon city life without it. Employers, both 
in city and country, should place it in the hands of their clerks and 
apprentices. Fathers should give it to their sons, and sons should 
keep it next their Bibles, and engrave its precepts upon their hearts. 
We are glad to learn, that, although so recently published, it has 
passed to a third edition, and the demand for it is increasing." 
[From the Cong. Journal, Concord, N. H.] 
" The writer draws his sketches with the hand of a master, and 
entering upon his work with a hearty interest in the young, for 

2 



14 NOTICES OF THE THIRD EDITION. 

whom he writes it, he makes them feel that he is honest and in 
earnest. While the book is not wanting in seriousness, it has the 
charm of variety ; and though it encourages stern religious and 
moral principles, the pictures drawn in it are so vivid, that it will be 
read with the interest of an ingenious work of fiction. Every father 
should put it in his family." 

Valuable notices have appeared in most of the papers in New 
England and New York state, too numerous to copy. 



LECTURE I. 



Give us this day our daily bread. Matt. vi. 11. 

This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he 
eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you disorderly, 
working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we 
command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness 
they work, and eat their own bread. 2 Thess. iii. 10, 12. 

The bread which we solicit of God, he gives us 
through our own industry. Prayer sows it, and 
Industry reaps it. 

As Industry is habitual activity in some useful 
pursuit, so, not only inactivity, but also all efforts 
without the design of usefulness, are of the nature 
of Idleness. The supine sluggard is no more indo- 
lent than the bustling do-nothing. Men may walk 
much, and read much, and talk much, and pass the 
day without an unoccupied moment, and yet be sub- 
stantially idle; because Industry requires, at least, 
the intention of usefulness. But gadding, gazing, 
lounging, mere pleasure-mongering, reading for the 
relief of ennui, — these are as useless as sleeping, or 
dozing, or the stupidity of a surfeit. 



16 INDUSTRY AND 

There are many grades of idleness ; and veins of 
it run through the most industrious life. We shall 
indulge in some descriptions of the various classes of 
idlers, and leave the reader to judge, if he be an 
indolent man, to which class he belongs. 

1. The lazy-man. He is of a very ancient pedi- 
gree ; for his family is minutely described by Solo- 
mon: How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when 
wilt thou awake out of sleep ? This is the language 
of impatience; the' speaker has been trying to 
awakeji him — pulling, pushing, rolling him over, and 
shouting in his ear ; but ail to no purpose. He solil- 
oquizes, whether it is possible for the man ever to 
wake up ! At length, the sleeper drawls out a doz- 
ing petition to be let alone : " Yet a little sleep, a little 
slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep ;" and 
the last words confusedly break into a snore, — that 
somnolent lullaby of repose. Long ago the birds 
have finished their matins, the sun has advanced 
full high, the dew has gone from the grass, and the 
labors of Industry are far in progress, when our 
sluggard, awakened by his very efforts to maintain 
sleep, slowly emerges to perform life's great duty of 
feeding — with him, second only in importance to 
sleep. And now, well rested, and suitably nour- 
ished, surely he will abound in labor. Nay, the slug- 
gard will not plough by reason of the cold. It is yet 



IDLENESS. 17 

early spring ; there is ice in the north ; and tne winds 
are hearty : his tender skin shrinks from exposure, 
and he waits for milder days, — envying the residents 
of tropical climates, where cold never comes, and 
harvests wave spontaneously. He is valiant at 
sleeping and at the trencher ; but for other courage, 
the slothful man saith, there is a lion without ; I shall 
be slain in the street. He has not been out to see ; 
but he heard a noise, and resolutely betakes himself 
to prudence. Under so thriving a manager, so alert 
in the morning, so busy through the day, and so 
enterprising, we might anticipate the thrift of his 
husbandry. I went by the field of the slothful and 
by the vineyard of the man void of understanding ; 
and lo ! it was all grown over with thorns, and net- 
tles had covered the face of it, and its stone wall was 
broken down. To complete the picture, only one 
thing more is wanted, — a description of his house, — 
and then we should have, at one view, the lazy- 
man, his farm, and house. Solomon has given us 
that also : By much slothfulness the building decay- 
eth ; and through idleness of the hands the house 
droppeth through. Let all this be put together, and 
possibly some reader may find an unpleasant resem- 
blance to his own affairs. 

He sleeps long and late, he wakes to stupidity, 
with indolent eyes sleepily rolling over neglected 
2* 



18 INDUSTRY AND 

work ; neglected because it is too cold in spring, and 
too hot in summer, and too laborious at all times, — 
a great coward in danger, and therefore very blus- 
tering in safety. His lands run to waste, his fences 
are dilapidated, his crops chiefly of weeds and bram- 
bles ; a shattered house, the side leaning over as if 
wishing, like its owner, to lie down to sleep ; the 
chimney tumbling down, the roof breaking in, with 
moss and grass sprouting in its crevices; the well 
without pump or windlass, a trap for their children. 
This is the very castle of Indolence. 

2. Another idler as useless, but vastly more active 
than the last, attends closely to every one's busi- 
ness, except his own. His wife earns the children's 
bread, and his ; procures her own raiment and his ; 
she procures the wood; she procures the water, 
while he, with hands in his pocket, is busy watch- 
ing the building of a neighbor's barn; or advising 
another how to trim and train his vines ; or he has 
heard of sickness in a friend's family, and is there, 
to suggest a hundred cures, and to do everything 
but to help; he is a spectator of shooting-matches, 
a stickler for a ring and fair play at every fight. He 
knows all the stories of all the families that live in 
the town. If he can catch a stranger at the tavern 
in a rainy day, he pours out a strain of information, 
a pattering of words, as thick as the rain-drops out 



IDLENESS. 19 

of doors. He has good advice to everybody, how 
to save, how to make money, how to do every- 
thing ; he can tell the saddler about his trade, he 
gives advice to the smith about his work, and goes 
over with him when it is forged to see the carriage- 
maker put it on, suggests improvements, advises this l 
paint or that varnish, criticises the finish, or praises 
the trimmings. He is a violent reader of newspa- 
pers, almanacs, and receipt books ; and with scraps 
of history and mutilated anecdotes, he faces the very 
I school master, and gives up only to the volubility of 
1 the oily village lawyer, — few have the hardihood to 
i match him. 

And thus every day he bustles through his multi- 
| farious idleness, and completes his circle of visits, as 
regularly as the pointers of a clock visit each figure 
on the dial plate; but alas! the clock forever tells 
j man the useful lesson of time passing steadily away, 
I and returning never ; but what useful thing do these 
, busy buzzing idlers perform ? 

J 3. We introduce another idler. He follows no 
1 vocation ; he only folio ws those who do. Some- 
times he sweeps along the streets, with consequen- 
tial gait ; sometimes % perfumes it with wasted odors 
of tobacco. He also haunts sunny benches, or breezy 
piazzas. His business is to see; his desire to be 
seen, and no one fails to see him, — so gaudily 



20 INDUSTRY AND 

dressed, his hat sitting aslant upon a wilderness of 
hair, like a bird half startled from its nest, and every 
thread arranged to provoke attention. He is a man 
of honor; not that he keeps his word or shrinks 
from meanness. He defrauds his laundress, his 
tailor, and his landlord. He drinks and smokes at 
other men's expense. He gambles and swears, and 
fights — when he is too drunk to be afraid ; but still 
he is a man of honor, for he has whiskers and looks 
fierce, wears mustachios and says, " upon my honor, 
sir ;" " do you doubt my honor, sir ? " 

Thus he appears by day ; by night he does not 
appear; he may be dimly seen flitting; his voice 
may be heard loud in the carousal of some refection 
cellar, or above the songs and uproar of a midnight 
return, and home staggering. 

4. The next of this brotherhood excites our pity. 
He began life most thriftily ; for his rising family he 
was gathering an ample subsistence; but, involved 
in other men's affairs, he went down in their ruin. 
Late in life he begins once more, and at length just 
secure of an easy competence, his ruin is compassed 
again. He sits down quietly under it, complains 
of no one, envies no one, refuseth the cup, and is 
even more pure in morals, than in better days. 
He moves on from day to day, as one who walks 
under a spell, — it is the spell of despondency, which 



IILENESS. 21 

nothing can disenchant or arouse. He neither seeks 
work nor refuses it. He wanders among men a 
dreaming gazer, poorly clad, always kind, always 
irresolute, able to plan nothing for himself, nor to 
execute what others have planned for him. He 
lives and he dies a discouraged man, and the most 
harmless and excusable of all idlers. 

5. I have not mentioned the fashionable idler, 
whose riches defeat every object for which God gave 
him birth. He has a fine form, and manly beauty, 
and the chief end of life is to display them. With 
notable diligence he ransacks the market for rare 
and curious fabrics, for costly seals, and chains, and 
rings. A coat poorly fitted is the unpardonable sin 
of his creed. He meditates upon cravats, employs 
a profound discrimination in selecting a hat, or a 
vest, and adopts his conclusions upon the tasteful- 
ness of a button or a collar, with the deliberation 
of a statesman. Thus caparisoned, he saunters in 
fashionable galleries, or flaunts in stylish equipage, 
or parades the streets with simpering belles, or de- 
lights their itching ears with compliments of flattery, 
or with choicely culled scandal. He is a reader of 
fictions, if they be not too substantial ; a writer of 
cards and billet-doux, and is especially conspicuous 
in albums. Gay and frivolous, rich and useless, 
polished till the enamel is worn off, his whole life 



22 INDUSTRY AND 

serves only to make him an animated puppet of 
pleasure. He is as corrupt in imagination as he is 
refined in manners ; he is as selfish in private as he 
is generous in public; and even what he gives to 
another, is given for his own sake. He worships 
where fashion worships, to-day at the theatre, to- 
morrow at the church, as either exhibits the whitest 
hand, or the most polished actor. A gaudy, active 
and indolent butterfly, he flutters without industry 
from flower to flower, until summer closes, and frosts 
sting him, and he sinks down and dies, unthought of 
and unremembered. 

6. One other portrait should be drawn of a busi- 
ness man, who wishes to subsist by his occupation 
while he attends to everything else. If a sporting 
club goes to the woods, he must go. He has set his 
line in every hole in the river, and dozed in a 
summer day under every tree along its bank. He 
rejoices in a riding party — a sleigh-ride — a summer- 
frolic — a winter's glee. He is everybody's friend — 
universally good-natured, — forever busy where it 
will do him no good, and remiss where his interests 
require activity. He takes amusement for his main 
business, which other men employ as a relaxation ; 
and the serious labor of life, which other men are 
mainly employed in, he knows only as a relaxation. 
After a few years he fails, his good nature is some- 






IDLENESS. 23 

thing clouded, and as age sobers his buoyancy, 
without repairing his profitless habits, he soon sinks 
to a lower grade of laziness, and to ruin. 

It would be endless to describe the wiles of idle- 
ness — how it creeps upon men, how secretly it min- 
gles with their pursuits, how much time it purloins 
from the scholar, from the professional man, and 
from the artisan. It steals minutes, it clips off the 
edges of hours, and at length takes possession of 
days. Where it has its will, it sinks and drowns 
employment; but where necessity, or ambition, or 
duty resists such violence, then indolence makes 
labor heavy; scatters the attention; puts us to our 
tasks with wandering thoughts, with irresolute pur- 
pose, and with dreamy visions. Thus when it may, 
it plucks out hours and rules over them ; and where 
this may not be, it lurks around them to impede the 
sway of industry, and turn her seeming toils to 
subtle idleness. Against so mischievous an enchant- 
ress, we should be duly armed. I shall, therefore, 
describe the advantages of Industry, and the evils of 
Indolence. 

1. A hearty Industry promotes happiness. Some 
men of the greatest industry are unhappy from infe- 
licity of disposition ; they are morose, or suspicious, 
or envious. Such qualities make happiness impos- 
sible under any circumstances. 



24 INDUSTRY AND 

Health is the platform on which all happine 
must be built. Good appetite, good digestion, and 
good sleep, are the elements of health, and Industry 
confers them. As use polishes metals, so labor the 
faculties, until the body performs its unimpeded 
functions with elastic cheerfulness and hearty enjoy- 
ment. 

Buoyant spirits are an element of happiness, and 
activity produces them; but they fly away from 
sluggishness, as fixed air from open wine. Men's 
spirits are like water, which sparkles when it runs, 
but stagnates in still pools, and is mantled with 
green, and breeds corruption and filth. The ap- 
plause of conscience, the self-respect of pride, the 
consciousness of independence, a manly joy of use- 
fulness, the consent of every faculty of the mind to 
one's occupation, and their gratification in it — these 
constitute a happiness superior to the fever-flashes 
of vice in its brightest moments. After an expe- 
rience of ages, which has taught nothing from this, 
men should have learned, that satisfaction is not the 
product of excess, or of indolence, or of riches ; but 
of industry, temperance, and usefulness. Every 
, village has instances which ought to teach young 
men, that he, who goes aside from the simplicity of 
nature, and the purity of virtue, to wallow in ex- 
cesses, carousals, and surfeits, at length misses the 



IDLENESS. 25 

errand of his life ; and sinking with shattered body 
prematurely to a dishonored grave, mourns that he 
mistook exhilaration for satisfaction, and abandoned 
the very home of happiness, when he forsook the 
labors of useful Industry. 

The poor man with Industry, is happier than the 
rich man in Idleness ; for labor makes the one more 
manly, and riches unmans the other. The slave is 
often happier than the master, who is nearer un- 
done by license than his vassal by toil. Luxurious 
couches — plushy carpets from oriental looms — pil- 
lows of eider-down — carriages contrived with cush- 
ions and springs to make motion imperceptible, — is 
the indolent master of these as happy as the slave 
that wove the carpet, the Indian who hunted the 
northern flock, or the servant who drives the pam- 
1 pered steeds? Let those who envy the gay revels 
of city idlers, and pine for their masquerades, their 
I routs, and their operas, experience for a week the 
! lassitude of their satiety, the unarousable torpor of 
j their life when not under a fiery stimulus, their des- 
| perate ennui, and restless somnolency, they would 
gladly flee from their haunts as from a land of cursed 
; enchantment. 

| 2. Industry is the parent of thrift. In the over- 
burdened states of Europe, the severest toil often 
only suffices to make life a wretched vacillation be- 
3 



26 INDUSTRY AND 

tween food and famine ; but in America, Industry is 
prosperity. 

Although God has stored the world with an end- 
less variety of riches for man's wants, he has made 
them all accessible only to Industry. The food 
we eat, the raiment which covers us, the house 
which protects, must be secured by diligence. To 
tempt man yet more to Industry, every product of 
the earth has a susceptibility of improvement ; so 
that man not only obtains the gifts of nature at the 
price of labor, but these gifts become more precious 
as we bestow upon them greater skill and cultiva- 
tion. The wheat and maize which crown our ample 
fields, were food fit but for birds, before man per- 
fected them by labor. The fruits of the forest and 
the hedge, scarcely tempting to the extremest hun- 
ger, after skill has dealt with them and transplanted 
them to the orchard and the garden, allure every 
sense with the richest colors, odors, and flavors. 
The world is full of germs which man is set to 
develop ; and there is scarcely an assignable limit, 
to which the hand of skill and labor may not bear 
the powers of nature. 

The scheming speculations of the last ten years 

, have produced an aversion among the young to the 

slow accumulations of ordinary Industry, and fired 

them with a conviction that shrewdness, cunning 



IDLENESS. 27 

and bold ventures, are a more manly way to wealth. 
There is a swarm of men, bred in the heats of ad- 
venturous times, whose thoughts scorn pence and 
farthings, and who humble themselves to speak of 
dollars ; — hundreds and thousands are their words. 
They are men of great operations. Forty thousand 
dollars is a moderate profit of a single speculation. 
They mean to own the Bank ; and to look down, 
before they die, upon Astor and Girard. The young 
farmer becomes almost ashamed to meet his school- 
mate, whose stores line whole streets, whose stocks 
are in every bank and company, and whose increas- 
ing money is already well nigh inestimable. *But 
if the butterfly derides the bee in summer, he was 
never known to do it in the lowering days of 
autumn.| 

Every few years, Commerce has its earthquakes, 
and the tall and toppling warehouses which haste 
ran up, are first shaken down. The hearts of men 
fail them for fear ; and the suddenly rich, made 
more suddenly poor, fill the land with their loud 
laments. But nothing strange has happened. When 
the whole story of commercial disasters is told, it 
is only found out that they, who slowly amassed 
the gains of useful Industry, built upon a rock : 
and they, who flung together the imaginary mil- 
lions of commercial speculations, built upon the 



28 INDUSTRY AND 

sand. When times grew dark, and the winds 
came, and the floods descended and beat upon them 
both — the rock sustained the one, and the shifting 
sand let down the other. If a young man has no 
higher ambition in life than riches, Industry — plain, 
rugged, brown-faced, homely clad, old-fashioned In- 
dustry, must be courted. Young men are pressed 
with a most unprofitable haste. They wish to reap 
before they have ploughed or sown. Everything is 
driving at such a rate, that they have become giddy. 
Laborious occupations are avoided. Money is to 
be earned in genteel leisure, with the help of fine 
clothes, and by the soft seductions of smooth hair 
and luxuriant whiskers. 

Parents, equally wild, foster the delusion. Shall 
the promising* lad be apprenticed to his uncle, the 
blacksmith? The sisters think the blacksmith so 
very smutty ; the mother shrinks from the ungen- 
tility of his swarthy labor ; the father, weighing the 
matter prudentially deeper, finds that a whole life 
had been spent in earning the uncle's property. 
These sagacious parents, wishing the tree to bear its 
fruit before it has ever blossomed, regard the long 
delay of industrious trades as a fatal objection to 
them. The son, then, must be a rich merchant, or a 
popular lawyer, or a broker ; and these, only as the 
openings to speculation. 



IDLENESS. 



29 



Young business men are often educated in two 
very unthrifty species of contempt ; a contempt for 
small gains, and a contempt for hard labor. To do 
one's own errands, to wheel one's own barrow, to 
be seen with a bundle, bag, or burden, is disrepu- 
table. Men are so sharp now-a-days, that they can 
compass by their shrewd heads, what their fathers 
used to do with their heads and hands. 

3. Industry gives character and credit to the 
young. The reputable portions of society have max- 
ims of prudence, by which the young are judged 
and admitted to their good opinion. Does he regard 
his word ? Is he industrious ? Is he economical ? Is 
he free from immoral habits ? The answer which 
a young man's conduct gives to these questions, 
settles his reception among good men. Experience 
has shown that the other good qualities of veracity, 
frugality, and modesty, are apt to be associated 
with industry. A prudent man would scarcely be 
persuaded that a listless, lounging fellow, would be 
economical or trust- worthy. An employer would 
judge wisely, that where there was little regard for 
time, or for occupation, there would be as little, 
upon temptation, for honesty or veracity. Pilfer- 
ings of the till, and robberies, are fit deeds for idle 
clerks, and lazy apprentices. Industry and knavery 
are sometimes found associated; but men wonder 
3* 



30 INDUSTRY AND 

at it, as at a strange thing. The epithets of society, 
which betoken its experience, are all in favor of 
Industry. Thus, the terms " a hard working man ;" 
"an industrious man;" "a laborious artisan;" are 
employed to mean, an honest man; a trust-worthy 
man. 

I may here, as well as anywhere, impart the 
secret of what is called good and bad luck. There 
are men who, supposing Providence to have an im- 
placable spite against them, bemoan in the poverty 
of a wretched old age the misfortunes of their lives. 
Luck forever ran against them, and for others. 
One, with a good profession, lost his luck in the 
river, where he idled away his time a fishing, when 
he should have been in the office. Another, with a 
good trade, perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot 
temper, which provoked all his employers to leave 
him. Another, with a lucrative business, lost his 
luck by amazing diligence at everything but his 
business. Another, who steadily followed his trade, 
as steadily followed his bottle. Another, who was 
honest and constant to his work, erred by perpetual 
misjudgments ; — he lacked discretion. Hundreds 
lose their luck by indorsing ; by sanguine specula- 
tions ; by trusting fraudulent men ; and by dishonest 
gains. A man never has good luck who has a bad 
wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, 



IDLENESS. 31 

prudent man. careful of his earnings, and strictly- 
honest who complained of bad luck. A good char- 
acter, good habits, and iron industry, are impreg- , 
nable to the assaults of all the ill luck that fools 
ever dreamed of. But ^hen I see a tatterdemalion, ., 
creeping out of a grocery late in the forenoon, with 
his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat 
turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has 
had bad luck, — for the worst of all luck, is to be a 
sluggard, a knave, or a tippler. 

4. Industry is a substitute for Genius. Where 
one or fnore faculties exist in the highest state of 
development and activity, — as the faculty of music 
in Mozart, — invention in Fulton, — ideality in Mil- 
ton, — we call their possessor a genius. But a genius 
is usually understood to be a creature of such rare 
facility of mind, that he can do anything without 
labor. /'According to the popular notion, he learns 
without study, and knows without learning. He is 
eloquent without preparation ; exact without calcu- 
lation; and profound without reflection.) While 
ordinary men toil for knowledge by reading, by 
comparison, and by minute research, a genius is sup- 
posed to receive it as the mind receives dreams. His 
mind is like a vast cathedral, through whose colored 
windows the sunlight streams, painting the aisles 
with the varied colors of brilliant pictures. Such 
minds may exist. 



32 INDUSTRY AND 

So far as my observations have ascertained the 
species, they abound in academies, colleges, and 
Thespian societies; in village debating clubs; in 
coteries of young artists, and among young profes- 
sional aspirants. They are to be known by a 
reserved air, excessive sensitiveness, and utter indo- 
lence ; by very long hair, and very open shirt collars ; 
by the reading of much wretched poetry, and the wri- 
ting of much, yet more wretched ; by being very 
conceited, very affected, very disagreeable, and very 
useless: — beings whom no man wants for friend, 
pupil, or companion. 

The occupations of the great man, and oi the 
common man, are necessarily, for the most part, the 
same ; for the business of life is made up of minute 
affairs, requiring only judgment and diligence. A 
high order of intellect is required for the discovery 
and defence of truth ; but this is an unfrequent task. 
Where the ordinary wants of life once require recon- 
dite principles, they will need the application of 
familiar truths a thousand times. Those who en- 
large the bounds of knowledge, must push out with 
bold adventure beyond the common walks of men. 
But only a few pioneers are needed for the largest 
armies, and a few profound men in each occupation 
may herald the advance of all the business of society. 
The vast bulk of men are required to discharge 



IDLENESS. 33 

the homely duties of life ; and they have less need 
of genius than of intellectual Industry and patient 
Enterprise. Young men should observe, that those 
who take the honors and emoluments of mechanical 
crafts, of commerce and of professional life, are 
rather distinguished for a sound judgment and a 
close application, than for a brilliant genius. In the 
ordinary business of life, Industry can do anything 
which Genius can do ; and very many things which 
it cannot. Genius is usually impatient of applica- 
tion, irritable, scornful of men's dulness, squeamish 
at petty disgusts :^4t loves a conspicuous place, a 
short work, and a large reward. It loathes the 
sweat of toil, the vexations of life, and the dull 
burden of care. 

Industry has a firmer muscle, is less annoyed by 
delays and repulses, and, like water, bends itself to 
the shape of the soil over which it flows ; and if 
checked, will not rest, but accumulates, and mines a 
passage beneath, or seeks a side-race, or rises above 
and overflows the obstruction. What Genius per- 
forms at one impulse, Industry gains by a succes- 
sion of blows. In ordinary matters they differ only 
in rapidity of execution, and are upon one level 
before men, — who see the result but not the process. 

It is admirable to know that those things which 
in skill, in art, and in learning, the world has been 



34 INDUSTRY AND 

unwilling to let die, have not only been the concep- 
tions of genius, but the products of toil. The mas- 
terpieces of antiquity, as well in literature, as in 
art, are known to have received their extreme finish, 
from an almost incredible continuance of labor upon 
them. I do not remember a book in all the depart- 
ments of learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a 
work in all the schools of art, from which its author 
has derived a permanent renown, that is not known 
to have been long and patiently elaborated. Genius 
needs Industry, as much as Industry needs Genius. 
If only Milton's imagination could have conceived 
his visions, his consummate industry only could 
have carved the immortal lines which enshrine 
them. If only Newton's mind could reach out to 
the secrets of Nature, even his could only do it by 
the homeliest toil. The works of Bacon are not 
midsummer-night dreams, but, like coral islands, 
they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed 
their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest 
accretions of persevering labor. The conceptions 
of Michael Angelo would have perished like a 
night's phantasy, had not his industry given them 
permanence. 

From enjoying the pleasant walks of Industry we 
turn reluctantly to explore the paths of Indolence. 

All degrees of Indolence incline a man to rely 



IDLENESS. 35 

upon others, and not upon himself; to eat their 
> bread and not his own. His carelessness is some- 
body's loss ; his neglect is somebody's downfall ; 
his promises are a perpetual stumbling block to all 
who trust them. If he borrows, the article remains 
borrowed; if he begs and gets, it is as the letting 
out of waters — no one knows when it will stop. 
He spoils your work ; disappoints your expecta- 
tions; exhausts your patience; eats up your sub- 
stance ; abuses your confidence ; and hangs a dead 
weight upon all your plans ; and the very best thing 
an honest man can do with a lazy man, is to get 
rid of him. Solomon says : Bray a fool with a 
pestle, in a mortar with wheat, yet will not his folly 
depart from him. He does not mention what kind 
of a fool he meant ; but as he speaks of a fool by 
preeminence, I take it for granted he meant a lazy 
man; and I am the more inclined to the opinion, 
from another expression of his experience : As vin- 
egar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes, so is the 
sluggard to them that send him. 

Indolence is a great spendthrift. An indolently 
inclined young man, can neither make nor keep 
property. I have high authority for this : He that 
is slothful in his work, is brother to him that is a 
great waster. 

When Satan would put ordinary men to a crop 



36 INDUSTRY AND 

of mischief, like a wise husbandman, he clears the 
ground and prepares it for seed ; but he finds the 
idle man already prepared, and he has scarcely the 
trouble of sowing; for vices, like weeds, ask little 
strewing, except what the wind gives their ripe and 
winged seeds, shaking and scattering them all 
abroad. Indeed, lazy men may fitly be likened to a 
tropical prairie, over which the wind of temptation 
perpetually blows, drifting every vagrant seed from 
hedge and hill, and which — without a moment's 
rest through all the year — waves its rank harvest 
of luxuriant weeds. 

First, the imagination will be haunted with un- 
lawful visitants. Upon the outskirts of towns are 
shattered houses, abandoned by reputable persons. 
They are not empty, because all the day silent; 
thieves, vagabonds and villains haunt them, in joint 
possession with rats, bats, and vermin. Such are 
idle men's imaginations — full of unlawful company. 

The imagination is closely related to the passions, 
and fires them with its heat. The day-dreams of 
indolent youth, glow each hour with warmer colors, 
and bolder adventures. The imagination fashions 
scenes of enchantment, in which the passions revel ; 
and it leads them out, in shadow at first, to deeds 
which soon they will seek in earnest. The brilliant 
1 colors of far-away clouds, are but the colors of the 
storm; the salacious day-dreams of indolent men, 



IDLENESS. 37 

rosy at first and distant, deepen every day, darker 
and darker, to the color of actual evil. Then fol- 
lows the blight of every habit. Indolence promises 
without redeeming the pledge; a mist of forge tful- 
ness rises up and obscures the memory of vows and 
oaths. The negligence of laziness breeds more 
falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. As 
poverty waits upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon 
such poverty, brood equivocations, subterfuges, 
lying denials. Falsehood becomes the instrument 
of every plan. Negligence of truth, next occasional 
falsehood, then wanton mendacity, — these three 
strides traverse the whole road of lies. 

Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, as to 
lying. Indeed, they are but different parts of the 
same road, and not far apart. In directing the con- 
duct of the Ephesian converts, Paul says, Let him 
that stole, steal no more, but rather let him labor, 
working with his hands the thing which is good. 
The men who were thieves, were those who had 
ceased to work. Industry was the road back to 
honesty. When stores are broken open, the idle 
are first suspected. The desperate forgeries and 
swindlings of past years have taught men, upon 
their occurrence, to ferret their authors among the 
unemployed, or among those vainly occupied in 
vicious pleasures. 
4 



38 INDUSTRY AND 

The terrible passion for stealing rarely grows 
upon the young, except through the necessities of 
their idle pleasures. Business is first neglected for 
amusement, and amusement soon becomes the only 
business. The appetite for vicious pleasure out- 
runs the means of procuring it. The theatre, the 
circus, the card-table, the midnight carouse, demand 
money. When scanty earnings are gone, the young 
man pilfers from the till. First, because he hopes 
to repay, and next, because he despairs of paying — 
for the disgrace of stealing ten dollars or a thou- 
sand will be the same, but not their respective 
pleasures. Next, he will gamble, since it is only 
another form of stealing. Gradually excluded from 
reputable society, the vagrant takes all the badges 
of vice, and is familiar with her paths ; and, through 
them, enters the broad road of crime. Society pre- 
cipitates its lazy members, as water does its filth ; 
and they form at the bottom, a pestilent sediment, 
stirred up by every breeze of evil, into riots, rob- 
beries and murders. Into it drains all the filth, and 
out of it, as from a morass, flow all the streams of 
pollution. Brutal wretches, desperately haunted by 
the law, crawling in human filth, brood here their 
I villain schemes, and plot mischief to man. Hither 
resorts the truculent demagogue, to stir up the foetid 
filth against his adversaries, or to bring up mobs out 



IDLENESS. 39 

of this sea, which cannot rest, but casts up mire and 
dirt. 

The results of Indolence upon communities, are 
as marked as upon individuals. In a town of indus- 
trious people, the streets would be clean; houses 
neat and comfortable ; fences in repair ; school-houses 
swarming with rosy-faced children, decently clad, 
and well-behaved. The laws would be respected, 
because justly administered. The church would 
be thronged with devout worshippers. The tavern 
would be silent, and for the most part empty, or a 
welcome retreat for weary travellers. Grog-sellers 
would fail, and mechanics grow rich; labor would 
be honorable, and loafing a disgrace. For music, 
the people would have the blacksmith's anvil, and 
the carpenter's hammer ; and at home, the spinning- 
wheel, and girls cheerfully singing at their work. 
Debts would be seldom paid, because seldom made ; 
but if contracted, no grim officer would be invited to 
the settlement. Town-officers would be respectable 
men, taking office reluctantly, and only for the public 
good. Public days would be full of sports, without 
fighting ; and elections would be as orderly as wed- 
dings or funerals. 

In a town of lazy-men, I should expect to find 
crazy houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked 
off; doors hingeless, and all a-creak : windows stuffed 



40 INDUSTRY AND 

with rags, hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in 
summer, and warmth in winter, every side of the 
house would swarm with vermin in hot weather — 
and with starveling pigs in cold; fences would be 
curiosities of lazy contrivance, and gates hung with 
ropes, or lying flat in the mud. Lank cattle would 
follow every loaded wagon, supplicating a morsel, 
with famine in their looks. Children would be 
ragged, dirty, saucy ; the school-house empty ; the 
jail full ; the church silent ; the grog-shops noisy ; 
and the carpenter, the saddler, and the blacksmith, 
would do their principal work at taverns. Lawyers 
would reign ; constables flourish, and hunt sneaking 
criminals; burly justices, (as their interests might 
dictate,) would connive a compromise, or make a 
commitment. The peace-officers would wink at 
tumults, arrest rioters in fun, and drink with them 
in good earnest. Good men would be obliged to 
keep dark, and bad men would swear, fight, and 
rule the town. Public days would be scenes of 
confusion, and end in rows ; elections would be 
drunken, illegal, boisterous and brutal. 

The young abhor the last results of Idleness ; but 
they do not perceive that the first steps lead to the 
last. They are in the opening of this career; but 
with them it is genteel leisure, not laziness; it is 
relaxation, not sloth ; amusement, not indolence. 



IDLENESS. 41 

But leisure, relaxation, and amusement, when men 
ought to be usefully engaged, are Indolence. A spe- 
cious Industry is the worst Idleness. A young man 
perceives that the first steps lead to the last, with 
everybody but himself. He sees others become 
drunkards by social tippling, — he sips socially, as 
if he could not be a drunkard. He sees others be- 
come dishonest, by petty habits of fraud ; but will 
indulge slight aberrations, as if he could not become 
knavish. Though others, by lying, lose all charac- 
ter, he does not imagine that his little dalliances 
with falsehood will make him a liar. He knows 
that salacious imaginations, villanous pictures, har- 
lot snuff-boxes, and illicit familiarities, have led 
thousands to her door, whose house is the way to 
hell ; yet he never sighs or trembles lest these things, 
should take him to this inevitable way of damna- 
tion! 

In reading these strictures upon Indolence, you 
will abhor it in others, without suspecting it in 
yourself. While you read, I fear you are excusing 
yourself; you are supposing that your leisure has 
not been laziness: or that, with your disposition, 
and in your circumstances, Indolence is harmless. 
Be not deceived : if you are idle, you are on the 
road to ruin : and there are few stopping places upon 

it. It is rather a precipice, than a road. While I 

4# 



42 INDUSTRY AND 

point out the temptation to Indolence, scrutinize your 
course, and pronounce honestly upon your risk. 

1. Some are tempted to Indolence by their 
wretched training, or rather, wretched want of it. 
How many families are the most remiss, whose low 
condition and sufferings are the strongest induce- 
ment to Industry. The children have no inher- 
itance, yet never work ; no education, yet are never 
sent to school. It is hard to keep their rags around 
them, yet none of them will earn better raiment. If 
ever there was a case when a Government should 
interfere between parent and child, that seems to be 
the one, where children are started in life with an 
education of vice. If, in every community, three 
things should be put together, which always work 
together, the front would be a grogshop, — the middle 
a. jail, — the rear a gallows ; — an infernal trinity ; and 
the recruits for this three-headed monster, are largely 
drafted from the lazy children of worthless parents. 

2. The children of rich parents are apt to be reared 
in Indolence. The ordinary motives to industry are 
wanting, and the temptations to sloth are multiplied. 
Other men labor to provide a support; to amass 
wealth ; to secure homage ; to obtain power ; to 
multiply the elegant products of art. The child of 
affluence inherits these things. Why should he 
labor who may command universal service, whose 



IDLENESS. 43 

money subsidizes the inventions of art, exhausts 
the luxuries of society, and makes rarities common 
by their abundance? Only the blind would not 
see that riches and ruin run in one channel to prod- 1 
igal children. The most rigorous regimen, the most 
confirmed industry, and steadfast morality can alone 
disarm inherited wealth, and reduce it to a bles- 
sing. The profligate wretch, who fondly watches 
his father's advancing decrepitude, and secretly 
curses the lingering steps of death, (seldom too slow 
except to hungry heirs,) at last is overblessed in 
the tidings that the loitering work is done — and the 
estate his. When the golden shower has fallen, he 
rules as a prince in a court of expectant parasites. 
All the sluices by which pleasurable vice drains an 
estate are opened wide. A few years complete the 
ruin. The hopeful heir, avoided by all whom he 
has helped, ignorant of useful labor, and scorning a 
knowledge of it, fired with an incurable appetite for 
vicious excitement, sinks steadily down, — a profli- 
gate, a wretch, a villain-scoundrel, a convicted felon. 
Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to 
hate labor, and to inherit riches, and before long 
they will be stung by every vice, racked by its 
poison, and damned by its penalty. 

3. Another cause of Idleness is found in the secret 
effects of youthful indulgence. The purest pleasures 



44 INDUSTRY AND 

lie within the circle of useful occupation. Mere 
pleasure, — sought outside of usefulness, — existing by 
itself, — is fraught with poison. When its exhilar- 
ation has thoroughly kindled the mind, the passions 
thenceforth refuse a simple food; they crave and 
require an excitement, higher than any ordinary 
occupation can give. After revelling all night in 
wine-dreams, or amid the fascinations of the dance, 
or the deceptions of the drama, what has the dull 
store, or the dirty shop, which can continue the pulse 
at this fever-heat of delight ? The face of Pleasure 
to the youthful imagination, is the face of an angel, 
a paradise of smiles, a home of love ; while the 
rugged face of Industry, embrowned by toil, is dull 
and repulsive : but at the end it is not so. These 
are harlot charms which Pleasure wears. At last, 
when Industry shall put on her beautiful gar- 
ments, and rest in the palace which her own hands 
have built, — Pleasure, blotched and diseased with 
indulgence, shall lie down and die upon the dung- 
hill. 

4. Example leads to Idleness. The children of 
industrious parents at the sight of vagrant rovers 
seeking their sports wherever they will, disrelish 
labor, and envy this unrestrained leisure. At the 
first relaxation of parental vigilance, they shrink 
from their odious tasks. Idleness is begun when 



IDLENESS. 45 

labor is a burden, and industry a bondage, and only- 
idle relaxation a pleasure. 

The example of political men, office-seekers, and 
public officers, is not usually conducive to Industry. 
The idea insensibly fastens upon the mind, that 
greatness and hard labor are not companions. The 
inexperience of youth imagines that great men are 
men of great leisure. They see them much in pub- 
lic, often applauded, and greatly followed. How 
disgusting in contrast is the mechanic's life ; a tink- 
ering shop, — dark and smutty, — is the only theatre 
of his exploits ; and labor, which covers him with 
sweat and fills him with weariness, brings neither 
notice nor praise. The ambitious apprentice, sigh- 
ing over his soiled hands, hates his ignoble work ; — 
neglecting it, he aspires to better things, — plots in a 
caucus ; declaims in a bar-room ; fights in a grog- 
shop ; and dies in a ditch. 

5. But the Indolence begotten by venal ambition 
must not be so easily dropped. At those periods of 
occasional disaster when embarrassments cloud the 
face of commerce, and trade drags heavily, sturdy 
laborers forsake industrial occupations, and petition 
for office. Had I a son able to gain a livelihood by 
toil, I had rather bury him, than witness his beg- 
garly supplications for office ; — sneaking along the 
path of men's passions to gain his advantage; hold- 



46 INDUSTRY AND 

ing in the breath of his honest opinions ; and breath- 
ing feigned words of flattery to hungry ears, popular 
or official ; and crawling, viler than a snake, through 
all the unmanly courses by which ignoble wretches 
purloin the votes of the dishonest, the drunken, and 
the vile. 

The late reverses of commerce have unsettled the 
habits of thousands. Manhood seems debilitated, 
and many sturdy yeomen are ashamed of nothing 
but labor. For a farthing-pittance of official salary, 
— for the miserable fees of a constable's office, — for 
the parings and perquisites of any deputyship, — a 
hundred men in every village, rush forward, — 
scrambling, jostling, crowding, — each more obse- 
quious than the other to lick the hand that holds the 
omnipotent vote, or the starveling office. The most 
supple cunning gains the prize. Of the disappointed 
crowd, a few, rebuked by their sober reflections, go 
back to their honest trade, — ashamed and cured of 
office-seeking. But the majority grumble for a day, 
then prick forth their ears, arrange their feline arts, 
and mouse again for another office. The general 
appetite for office and disrelish for industrial call- 
ings, is a prolific source of Idleness; and it would 
be well for the honor of young men if they were 
bred to regard office as fit only for those who have 
clearly shown themselves able and willing to sup- 



IDLENESS. 47 

port their families without it. No office can make a 
' worthless man respectable ; and a man of integrity, 
thrift, and religion, has name enough without badge 
or office. 

6. Men become Indolent through the reverses of 

fortune. Surely, despondency is a grievous thing, 

and a heavy load to bear. To see disaster and 

wreck in the present, and no light in the future ; but 

only storms, lurid by the contrast of past prosperity, 

and growing darker as they advance; — to wear a 

constant expectation of woe like a girdle ; to see want 

at the door, imperiously knocking, while there is no 

strength to repel, or courage to bear its tyranny j — 

I indeed, this is dreadful enough.,- But there is a thing 

I more dreadful. It is more dreadful if the man is 

wrecked with his fortune. Caii anything be more 

poignant in anticipation, than one's ownself, un- 

I nerved, cowed down and slackened to utter pliancy, 

and helplessly drifting and driven down the troubled 

{ sea of life ? Of all things on earth, next to his God, 

j a broken man should cling to a courageous Industry. 

If it brings nothing back, and saves nothing, it will 

save him. To be pressed down by adversity has 

nothing in it of disgrace ; but it is disgraceful to lie 

down under it like a supple dog. Indeed, to stand 

composedly in the storm, amidst its rage and wildest 

devastations ; to let it beat over you, and roar around 



48 INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS. 

you, and pass by you, and leave you undismayed, — 
this,is to be a man. Adversity is the mint in which 
God stamps upon us his image and superscription. 
In this matter men may learn of insects. The ant 
will repair his dwelling as often as the mischievous 
foot crushes it; the spider will exhaust life itself, 
before he will live without a web ; — the bee can be 
decoyed from his labor neither by plenty nor scarcity. 
If summer be abundant it toils none the less ; if it be 
parsimonious of flowers, the tiny laborer sweeps a 
wider circle, and by Industry, repairs the frugality 
of the season. Man should be ashamed to be re- 
buked in vain by the spider, the ant, and the bee. 

Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall 
stand before kings } he shall not stand before mean 
men. 



LECTURE II. 



Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in 
the sight of men. 2 Cor. viii. 21. 

Only extraordinary circumstances can give the 
I appearance of dishonesty to an honest man. Usu- 
ally, not to seem honest, is not to be so. The 
I quality must not be doubtful like twilight, lingering 
j between night and day and taking hues from both ; 
it must be day-light, clear, and effulgent. This is 
the doctrine of the Bible: Providing for honest 
things, ?wt only in the sight of the Lord, but also in 
the sight of men. In general it may be said that no 
one has honesty without dross, until he has honesty 
without suspicion. • - 

We are passing through times upon which the 
seeds of dishonesty have been sown broadcast, and 
they have brought forth a hundred fold. These 
times will pass away ; but like ones will come 
again. As physicians study the causes and record 
the phenomena of plagues and pestilences, to draw 
5 



50 TWELVE CAUSES 

from them an antidote against their recurrence, so 
should we leave to another generation a history of 
moral plagues, as the best antidote to their recurring 
malignity. 

Upon a land, — capacious beyond measure, whose 
prodigal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable 
abundance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people 
signalized by enterprise and industry, — there came 
a summer of prosperity which lingered so long 
and shone so brightly, that men forgot that winter 
could ever come. Each day grew brighter. No 
reins were put upon the imagination. Its dreams 
passed for realities. Even sober men, touched with 
wildness, seemed to expect a realization of oriental 
tales. Upon this bright day came sudden frosts, 
storms, and blight. Men awoke from gorgeous 
dreams in the* midst of desolation. The harvests 
of years were swept away in a day. ( The strongest 
firms were rent as easily as the oak by lightning. 
Speculating companies were dispersed as seared 
leaves from a tree in autumn. Merchants were 
ruined by thousands; clerks turned adrift by ten 
thousands. Mechanics were left in idleness. Farm- 
ers sighed over flocks and wheat as useless as the 
stones and dirt. The wide sea of commerce was 
I stagnant ; upon the realm of Industry settled down 
a sullen lethargy. 



OF DISHONESTY. 51 

Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host 
of dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass. 
Banks were exploded, — or robbed, — or fleeced by- 
astounding forgeries. Mighty companies, without 
cohesion, went to pieces, and hordes of wretches 
snatched up every bale that came ashore. Cities 
were ransacked by troops of villains. The unpar- 
alleled frauds, which sprung like mines on every 
hand, set every man to trembling lest the next ex- 
plosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity 
seemed to have forsaken men. Many that had earn- 
ed a reputation for sterling honesty were cast so sud- 
denly headlong into wickedness, that man shrank 
from man. Suspicion overgrew confidence, and the 
heart bristled with the nettles and thorns of fear and 
jealousy. Then had almost come to pass the divine 
delineation of ancient wickedness : The good man 
is perished out of the earth : and there is none up- 
right among men : they all lie in wait for blood ; 
they hunt every man his brother with a net That 
they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the 
prince and the judge ask for a reward: and the great 
man uttereth his mischievous desire ; so they wrap it 
up. The best of them is a brier; the most upright 
is sharper than a thorn hedge. The world looked 
upon a continent of inexhaustible fertility, (whose 
harvest had glutted the markets, and rotted in dis- 



52 TWELVE CAUSES 

use,) filled with lamentation, and its inhabitants 
wandering like bereaved citizens among the ruins 
of an earthquake, mourning for children, for houses 
crushed, and property buried forever. 

That no measure might be put to the calamity, 
the Church of God, which rises a stately tower of 
refuge to desponding men, seemed now to have lost 
its power of protection. When the solemn voice of 
Religion should have gone over the land, as the call 
of God to guilty man to seek in him their strength ; 
in this time when Religion should have restored 
sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, and 
bound up the broken-hearted, she was herself 
mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the 
noise of warring sects; some contending against 
others with bitter warfare ; and some, possessed of 
a demon, wallowed upon the ground foaming and 
rending themselves. In a time of panic, and disas- 
ter, and distress, and crime, the fountain which 
should have been for the healing of men, cast up its 
sediments, and gave out a bitter stream of pollution. 

In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed 
the clamor of contention, and cooled the heats of 
parties ; but the greatness of our national calamity 
seemed only to enkindle the fury of political parties. 
Contentions never ran with such deep streams and 
impetuous currents, as amidst the ruin of our indus- 



OF DISHONESTY. 53 

try and prosperity. States were greater debtors to 
foreign nations, than their citizens were to each 
other. Both states and citizens shrunk back from 
their debts, and yet more dishonestly from the taxes 
necessary to discharge them. The General Govern- 
ment did not escape, but lay becalmed, or pursued 
its course, like a ship, at every furlong touching 
the rocks, or beating against the sands. The Capitol 
trembled with the first waves of a question which 
is yet to shake the whole land. New questions 

i of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of legisla- 
tion, and of morals. To all this must be added a 
manifest decline of family government ; an increase 
of the ratio of popular ignorance; a decrease of 

i reverence for law, and an effeminate administration 
of it. Popular tumults have been as frequent as 
freshets in our rivers; and like them, have swept 
over the land with desolation, and left their filthy 
slime in the highest places : — upon the press ; — upon 
the legislature; — in the halls of our courts; — and 
even upon the sacred bench of Justice. If unsettled 
times foster dishonesty, it should have flourished 
among us. And it has. 

Our nation must expect a periodical return of 

such convulsions ; but experience should steadily 

curtail their ravages, and remedy their Immoral 

tendencies. Young men have before them lessons 

5* 



54 TWELVE CAUSES 

of manifold wisdom taught by the severest of mas- 
ters — experience. They should be studied ; and 
that they may be, I shall, from this general survey, 
turn to a specific enumeration of the causes of dis- 
honesty. 

1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, 
a vehement inclination to dishonest ways. Kna- 
vish propensities are inherent : born with the child 
and transmissible from parent to son. The children 
of a sturdy thief, if taken from him at birth and 
reared by honest men, would, doubtless, have to 
contend against a strongly dishonest inclination. 
Foundlings and orphans under public charitable 
charge, are more apt to become vicious than other 
children. They are usually born of low and vicious 
parents, and inherit their parents' propensities. 
Only the most thorough moral training can overrule 
this innate depravity. 

2. A child naturally fair-minded, may become 
dishonest by parental example. He is early taught 
to be sharp in bargains, and vigilant for every 
advantage. Little is said about honesty, and much 
upon shrewd traffic. A dexterous trick, becomes a 
family anecdote; visitors are regaled with the boy's 
precocious keenness. Hearing the praise of his ex- 
ploits, he studies craft, and >seeks parental admira- 
tion by adroit knaveries. He is taught, for his 



OF DISHONESTY. 55 

safety, that he must not range beyond the law : that 
would be unprofitable. He calculates his morality 
thus : Legal honesty is the best policy,— dishon- 
esty, then, is a bad bargain — and therefore wrong 
— everything is wrong which is unthrifty. What- 
ever profit breaks no legal statute — though it is 
gained by falsehood, by unfairness, by gloss ; 
through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupulous 
conscience — he considers fair, and says: The law 
allows it Men may spend a long life without an 
indictable action, and without an honest one. No 
law can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. 
The law allows, and religion forbids men, to profit 
by others' misfortunes, to prowl for prey among the 
ignorant, to overreach the simple, to suck the last 
life-drops from the bleeding; to hover over men 
as a vulture over herds, swooping down upon the 
weak, the straggling, and the weary. The infernal 
craft of cunning men, turns the law itself to piracy, 
and works outrageous fraud in the hall of Courts, 
by the decision of judges, and under the seal of 
Justice. 

3. Dishonesty is learned from one's employers. 
The boy of honest parents and honestly bred, goes 
to a trade, or a store, where the employer practises 
legal frauds. The plain honesty of the boy excites 
roars of laughter among the better taught clerks. 



56 TWELVE CAUSES 

The master tells them that such blundering truth- 
fulness must be pitied ; the boy evidently has been 
neglected, and is not to be ridiculed for what he 
could not help. At first, it verily pains the youth's 
scruples, and tinges his face to frame a deliberate 
dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it. His tongue 
stammers at a lie; but the example of a rich mas- 
ter, the jeers and gibes of shopmates, with gradual 
practice, cure all this. He becomes adroit in fleec- 
ing customers for his master's sake, and equally 
dexterous in fleecing his master for his own sake. 

4. Extravagance is a prolific source of dishon- 
esty. Extravagance, — which is foolish expense, or 
expense disproportionate to one's means,— may be 
found in all grades of society ; but it is chiefly ap- 
parent among the rich, those aspiring to wealth, 
and those wishing to be thought affluent. Many a 
young man cheats his business, by transferring his 
means to theatres, race-courses, expensive parties, 
and to the nameless and numberless projects of 
pleasure. The enterprise of others is baffled by the 
extravagance of their family; for few men can 
make as much in a year as an extravagant woman 
can carry on her back in one winter. Some are 
ambitious of fashionable society, and will gratify 
their vanity at any expense. This disproportion 
between means and expense soon brings on a crisis. 



OF DISHONESTY. 57 

The victim is straitened for money ; without it he 
must abandon his rank; for fashionable society 
remorselessly rejects all butterflies which have lost 
their brilliant colors. Which shall he choose, hon- 
esty and mortifying exclusion, or gaiety purchased 
by dishonesty ? The severity of this choice some- 
times sobers the intoxicated brain; and a young man 
shrinks from the gulf, appalled at the darkness of 
dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life with 
or without fraud, is Paradise; and any other life 
Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty with- 
out a scruple. It is at this point that public senti- 
ment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges the 
thief of Necessity, and pities the thief of Fashion. 

The struggle with others is on the very ground 
of honor. A wife led from affluence to frigid penury 
and neglect; from leisure and luxury to toil and 
want ; daughters, once courted as rich, to be dises- 
teemed when poor,— this is the gloomy prospect, 
seen through a magic haze of despondency. Honor, 
love and generosity, strangely bewitched, plead for 
dishonesty as the only alternative to such suffering. 
But go, young man, to your wife; tell her the alter- 
native ; if she is worthy of you, she will face your 
poverty with a courage which shall shame your 
fears, and lead you into its wilderness and through 
it, all unshrinking. Many there be who went weep- 



58 TWELVE CAUSES 

ing into this desert, and ere long, having found in 
it the fountains of the purest peace, have thanked 
God for the pleasures of poverty. But if your wife 
unmans your resolution, imploring dishonor rather 
than penury, may God pity and help you ! You 
dwell with a sorceress, and few can resist her wiles. 
5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishon- 
esty. The Royal Preacher tells us : The borrower 
is servant to the lender. Debt is a rigorous servi- 
tude. The debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, 
concealments, and frauds, by which slaves evade or 
cheat their master. He is tempted to make ambig- 
uous statements; pledges, with secret passages of 
escape ; contracts, with fraudulent constructions ; 
lying excuses, and more mendacious promises. He 
is tempted to elude responsibility; to delay settle- 
ments; to prevaricate upon the terms; to resist 
equity, and devise specious fraud. When the eager 
creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law, the 
debtor then thinks himself released from moral obli- 
gation, and brought to a legal game, in which it is 
lawful for the best player to win. He disputes true 
accounts; he studies subterfuges; extorts provoca- 
tions delays ; and harbors in every nook, and corner, 
and passage, of the law's labyrinth. At length the 
measure is filled up, and the malignant power of 
debt is known. It has opened in the heart every 



OF DISHONESTY. 59 

fountain of iniquity ; it has besoiled the conscience ; 
it has tarnished the honor ; it has made the man a 
deliberate student of knavery ; a systematic practi- 
tioner of fraud : it has dragged him through all the 
sewers of petty passions, — anger, hate, revenge, 
malicious folly, or malignant shame. When a debtoi 
is beaten at every point, and the law will put her 
screws upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of 
dishonesty into which he will not boldly plunge. 
Some men put their property to the flames, assassi- 
nate the detested creditor, and end the frantic trag- 
edy by suicide, or the gallows. Others, in view of 
the catastrophe, have converted all property to cash, 
and concealed it. The law's utmost skill, and the 
creditor's fury, are alike powerless now, — the tree 
is green and thrifty; its roots drawing a copious 
supply from some hidden fountain. 

Craft has another harbor of resort for the piratical 
crew of dishonesty ; viz. : putting the property out of 
the law's reach by a fraudulent conveyance. Who- 
ever runs in debt, and consumes the equivalent of 
his indebtedness ; whoever is fairly liable to damage 
for broken contracts ; whoever by folly, has incur- 
red debts and lost the benefit of his outlay ; whoever 
is legally obliged to pay for his malice or careless- 
ness; whoever by infidelity to public trusts has 
made his property a just remuneration for his de- 



60 TWELVE CAUSES 

faults -.—whoever of all these, or whoever, under any 
circumstances, puts out of his hands property, mor- 
ally or legally due to creditors, is a dishonest man. 
The crazy excuses which men render to their con- 
sciences, are only such as every villain makes, who 
is unwilling to look upon the black face of his 
crimes. 

He who will receive a conveyance of property, 
knowing it to be illusive and fraudulent, is as wicked 
as the principal ; and as much meaner, as the tool 
and subordinate of villany is meaner than the 
master who uses him. 

If a church, knowing all these facts, or wilfully 
ignorant of them, allows a member to nestle in the 
security of the sanctuary ; then the act of this rob- 
ber, and the connivance of the church, are but the 
two parts of one crime. 

6. Bankruptcy, although a branch of debt, de- 
serves a separate mention. It sometimes crushes a 
man's spirit, and sometimes exasperates it. The 
poignancy of the evil depends much upon the dis- 
position of the creditors ; and as much upon the 
disposition of the victim. Should they act with the 
lenity of Christian men, and he with manly honesty, 
promptly rendering up whatever satisfaction of debt 
he has,— he may visit the lowest places of human 
adversity, and find there the light of good men's 



OF DISHONESTY. 61 

esteem, the support of conscience, and the suste- 
nance of religion. 

A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose 
tender-mercies are cruel; or his dishonest equivo- 
cations may exasperate their temper and provoke 
every thorn and brier of the law. When men's pas- 
sions are let loose, especially their avarice whetted 
by real or imaginary wrong; when there is a rivalry 
among creditors, lest any one should feast upon the 
victim more than his share ; and they all rush upon 
him like wolves upon a wounded deer, dragging 
him down, ripping him open, breast and flank, 
plunging deep their bloody muzzles to reach the 
heart and taste blood at the very fountain ; — is it 
strange that resistance is desperate and unscrupu- 
lous? At length the sufferer drags his mutilated 
carcass aside, every nerve and muscle wrung with 
pain, and his whole body an instrument of agony. 
He curses the whole inhuman crew with envenomed 
imprecations; and thenceforth, a brooding misan- 
thrope, he pays back to society, by studied villanies, 
the legal wrongs which the relentless justice of a 
few, or his own knavery, have brought upon him. 

7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties prac- 
tised because the law allows them. The very anx- 
iety of law to reach the devices of cunning, so per- 
plexes its statutes with exceptions, limitations, and 
6 



62 TWELVE CAUSES 

supplements, that like a castle gradually enlarged 
for centuries, it has its crevices, dark corners, secret 
holes and winding passages — an endless harbor for 
rats and vermin, where no trap can catch them. 
We are villanously infested with legal rats and ras- 
cals, who are able to commit the most flagrant dis- 
honesties with impunity. They can do all of wrong 
which is profitable, without that part which is 
actionable. The very ingenuity of these miscreants 
excites such admiration of their skill, that their life 
is gilded with a specious respectability. Men pro- 
fess little esteem for blunt, necessitous thieves, who 
rob and run away; but for a gentleman who can 
break the whole of God's law so adroitly, as to leave 
man's law unbroken ; who can indulge in such con- 
servative stealing that his fellow-men award him 
a rank among honest men for the excessive skill 
of his dishonesty — for such an one, I fear, there is 
almost universal sympathy. 

8. Political Dishonesty, breeds dishonesty of 
every kind. It is possible for good men to permit 
single sins to coexist with general integrity, where 
the evil is indulged through ignorance. Once, 
undoubted Christians were slave-traders. They 
might be, while unenlightened ; but not in our 
• times. A state of mind which will intend one fraud, 
will, upon occasions, intend a thousand. He that 



OF DISHONESTY. 63 

upon one emergency will lie, will be supplied with 
emergencies. He that will perjure himself to save 
a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save 
himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us that 
He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. 
Circumstances may withdraw a politician from 
temptation to any but political dishonesty; but 
under temptation, a dishonest politician would be a 
dishonest cashier, — would be dishonest anywhere, 
— in anything. The fury which destroys an oppo- 
nent's character, would stop at nothing, if barriers 
were thrown down. That which is true of the 
leaders in politics, is true of subordinates. Political 
dishonesty in voters runs into general dishonesty, as 
the rotten speck taints the whole apple. A commu- 
nity whose politics are conducted by a perpetual 
breach of honesty on both sides, will be tainted by 
immorality throughout. Men will play the same 
game in their private affairs, which they have 
learned to play in public matters. The guile, the 
crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage, the cun- 
ning sharpness ;: — the tricks and traps and sly eva- 
sions; the equivocal promises, and unequivocal 
neglect of them, which characterize political action, 
will equally characterize private action. The mind 
bas no kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the 
parlor remains clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere ; 



64 TWELVE CAUSES 

if it comes into one apartment, it penetrates into 
every one. Whoever will lie in politics, will lie in 
traffic. Whoever will slander in politics, will slan- 
der in personal squabbles. A professor of religion 
who is a dishonest politician, is a dishonest Christian. 
His creed is a perpetual index of his hypocrisy. 

The genius of our government directs the atten- 
tion of every citizen to politics. Its spirit reaches 
the uttermost bound of society, and pervades the 
whole mass. If its channels are slimy with corrup- 
tion, what limit can be set to its malign influence ? 
The turbulence of elections, the virulence of the 
press, the desperation of bad men, the hoplessness 
of efforts which are not cunning, but only honest, 
have driven many conscientious men from any 
concern with politics. This is suicidal. Thus the 
tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our youth 
will be caught up in its whirling bosom and dashed 
to pieces, and its hail will break down every green 
thing. At God's house the cure should begin. Let 
the hand of discipline smite the leprous lips which 
shall utter the profane heresy: All is fair in poli- 
tics. If any hoary professor, drunk with the min- 
gled wine of excitement, shall tell our youth, that a 
Christian man may act in politics by any other rule 
of morality than that of the Bible ; and that wicked- 
ness performed for a party, is not as abominable, 



OF DISHONESTY. 65 

as if done for a man ; or that any necessity justifies 
or palliates dishonesty in word or deed, — let such an 
one go out of the camp, and his pestilent breath no 
longer spread contagion among our youth. No man 
who loves his country, should shrink from her side 
when she groans with raging distempers. Let 
every Christian man stand in his place; rebuke 
every dishonest practice ; scorn a political as well as 
a personal lie; and refuse with indignation to be 
insulted by the solicitation of an immoral man. Let 
good men of all parties require honesty, integrity, 
veracity, and morality in politics, and there, as 
powerfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of 
public sentiment will ultimately be felt. 

9. A corrupt public sentiment produces dishon- 
esty. A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is 
not disgraceful ; in which bad men are respectable, 
are trusted, are honored, are exalted — is a curse to 
the young. The fever of speculation, the universal 
derangement of business, the growing laxness of 
morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such 
a state of things. Men of notorious immorality, 
whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits 
would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. 
I have seen a man stained with every sin, except 
those which required courage ; into whose head I 
do not think a pure thought has entered for forty 
6* 



66 TWELVE CAUSES 

years ; in whose heart an honorable feeling would 
droop for very loneliness ; — in evil he was ripe and 
rotten ; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his 
present life and in all his past ; evil when by him- 
self, and viler among men ; corrupting to the young ; 
— to domestic fidelity, a recreant ; to common honor, 
a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a 
hypocrite ; — base in all that is worthy of man, and 
accomplished in whatever is disgraceful; and yet 
this wretch could go where he would ; enter good 
men's dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men 
would curse him, yet obey him; hate him and 
assist him; warn their sons against him, and lead 
them to the polls for him. A public sentiment which 
produces ignominious knaves, cannot breed honest 
men. 

Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks 
the administration of justice between man and man, 
is ruinous to honesty. The violent fluctuations of 
business cover the ground with rubbish over whicl 
men stumble ; and fill the air with dust, in which 
all the shapes of honesty appear distorted. Men 
are thrown upon unusual expedients; dishonesties 
are unobserved ; those who have been reckless and 
profuse, stave off the legitimate fruits of their folly 
by desperate shifts. We have not yet emerged from 
a period, in which debts were insecure ; the debtor 



OF DISHONESTY. 67 

legally protected against the rights of the creditor ; 
taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for 
political effect ; and lowered to a dishonest insuffi- 
ciency; and when thus diminished, not collected; 
the citizens resisting their own officers ; officers re- 
signing at the bidding of the electors; the laws of 
property paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up; and 
stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which 
the courts look with aversion, yet fear to deny them, 
lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back 
disdainfully upon the bench, to despoil its dignity, 
and prostrate its power. General suffering has made 
us tolerant of general dishonesty ; and the gloom of 
our commercial disaster threatens to become the pall 
of our morals. 

If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to 
atrocious dishonesties is not aroused ; if good men 
do not bestir themselves to drag the young from this 
foul sorcery; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not 
tightened, and conscience intoned to a severer mo- 
rality, our night is at hand, — our midnight not far 
off. Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon 
broken* laws, and wealth saved by injustice ! Woe 
to a generation fed upon the bread of fraud, whose 
children's inheritance shall be a perpetual me- 
mento of their fathers' unrighteousness; to whom 
dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association 



68 TWELVE CAUSES 

with the revered memories of father, brother, and 
friend ! 

But when a whole people, united by a common 
disregard of justice, conspire to defraud public cred- 
itors; and States vie with States in an infamous 
repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods ; 
and nations exert their sovereignty to protect and 
dignify the knavery of a Commonwealth ; then the 
confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend, before 
whose flight honor fades away, and under whose 
feet the sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn 
compacts are stamped down and ground into the 
dirt. Need we ask the causes of growing dishonesty 
among the young, and the increasing untrustwor- 
thiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed 
with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on 
fraud for their garments ? 

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defal- 
cations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, 
have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with 
the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget 
of each week is incomplete without its mob and run- 
away cashier — its duel and defaulter ; and as waves 
which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow 
on, so the villanies of each week obliterate the 
record of the last. 

The mania of dishonesty cannot arise from local 









OF DISHONESTY. 69 

causes ; it is the result of disease in the whole com- 
munity; an eruption betokening foulness of the 
blood ; blotches symptomatic of a disordered system. 

10. Financial agents are especially liable to the 
temptations of Dishonesty. Safe merchants, and I 
visionary schemers ; sagacious adventurers, and rash I 
speculators; frugal beginners, and retired million- 
aires, are constantly around them. Every word, 
every act, every entry, every letter, suggests only 
wealth — its germ, its bud, its blossom, its golden 
harvest. Its brilliance dazzles the sight; its seduc- 
tions stir the appetites ; its power fires the ambition, 
and the soul concentrates its energies to obtain 
wealth, as life's highest and only joy. 

Besides the influence of such associations, direct 
dealing in money as a commodity, has a peculiar 
effect upon the heart. There is no property between 
it and the mind ; — no medium to mellow its light. 
The mind is diverted and refreshed by no thoughts 
upon the quality of soils ; the durability of struc- 
tures; the advantages of sites; the beauty of fab- 
rics ; it is not invigorated by the necessity of labor 
and ingenuity which the mechanic feels; by the 
invention of the artisan, or the taste of the artist. 
The whole attention falls directly upon naked 
Money. The hourly sight of it whets the appetite, 
and sharpens it to avarice. Thus, with an intense 



70 TWELVE CAUSES 

regard of riches, steals in also the miser's relish of 
coin — that insatiate gazing and fondling, by which 
seductive metal wins to itself all the blandishments 
of love. 

Those who mean to be rich, often begin by imita- 
ting the expensive courses of those who are rich. 
They are also tempted to venture, before they have 
means of their own, in brilliant speculations. How 
can a young cashier pay the drafts of his illicit 
pleasures, or procure the seed, for the harvest of 
speculation, out of his narrow salary? Here first 
begins to work the leaven of death. The mind 
wanders in dreams of gain; it broods over projects 
of unlawful riches ; stealthily at first, and then with 
less reserve ; at last it boldly meditates the possi- 
bility of being dishonest and safe. When a man 
can seriously reflect upon dishonesty as a possible 
and profitable thing, he is already deeply dishonest. 
To a mind so tainted, will flock stories of consum- 
mate craft, of effective knavery, of fraud covered by 
its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks 
from its own thoughts, and trembles to look down 
the giddy cliff on whose edge they poise, or over 
which they fling themselves like sporting sea-birds. 
But these imaginations will not be driven from the 
heart where they have once nested. They haunt a 
man's business, visit him in dreams, and vampire- 



OF DISHONESTY. 71 

like, fan the slumbers of the victim whom they will 
destroy. In some feverish hour, vibrating between 
conscience and avarice, the man staggers to a com- 
promise. To satisfy his conscience he refuses to 
steal; and to gratify his avarice, he borrows the 
funds ;— not openly— not of owners— not of men : 
but of the till— the safe— the vault ! 

He resolves to restore the money before discovery 
can ensue, and pocket the profits. Meanwhile, false 
entries are made, perjured oaths are sworn, forged 
papers are filed. His expenses grow profuse, and 
men wonder from what fountain so copious a stream 
can flow. 

Let us stop here to survey his condition. He 
flourishes, is called prosperous, thinks himself safe. 
Ts he safe, or honest? He has stolen, and embarked 
the amount upon a sea over which wander perpetual 
storms ; where wreck is the common fate, and escape 
the accident ; and now all his chance for the sem- 
blance of honesty, is staked upon the return of his 
embezzlements from among the sands, the rocks and 
currents, the winds and waves, and darkness, of 
tumultuous speculation. At length dawns the day 
of discovery. His guilty dreams have long foretok- 
ened it. As he confronts the disgrace almost face to 
face, how changed is the hideous aspect of his deed, 
from that fair face of promise with which it tempted 



72 TWELVE CAUSES 

him! Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, 
which left him when they could not restrain, now 
come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by 
the prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, 
and his children's beggary, he cows down, and slinks 
out of life a frantic suicide. 

Some there be, however, less supple to shame. 
They meet their fate with cool impudence; defy 
their employers ; brave the court, and too often with 
success. The delusion of the public mind, or the 
confusion of affairs is such, that, while petty cul- 
prits are tumbled into prison, a cool, calculating and 
immense scoundrel is pitied, dandled and nursed 
by a sympathizing community. In the broad road 
slanting to the rogue's retreat, are seen the officer 
of the bank, the agent of the state, the officer of 
the church, in indiscriminate haste, outrunning a 
lazy justice, and bearing off the gains of astounding 
frauds. Avarice and pleasure seem to have dis- 
solved the conscience. It is a day of trouble and of 
perplexity from the Lord. We tremble to think that 
oar children must leave the covert of the family, 
and go out upon that dark and yesty sea, from 
whose wrath so many wrecks are cast up at our 
feet. Of one thing I am certain ; if the church of 
Christ is silent to such deeds, and makes her altar a 
refuge to such dishonesty, the day is coming when 



OF DISHONESTY. 73 

she shall have no altar, the light shall go out from 
her candlestick, her walls shall be desolate, and the 
fox look out at her windows. 

11. Executive clemency, by its frequency, has 
been a temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to 
be a culprit when a legal sentence is the argument 
of pity, and the prelude of pardon? What can the 
community expect but growing dishonesty, when 
juries connive at acquittals, and judges condemn 
only to petition a pardon; when honest men and 
officers fly before a mob; when jails are besieged 
and threatened, if felons are not relinquished ; when 
the Executive, consulting the spirit of the commu- 
nity, receives the demands of the mob, and humbly 
complies, throwing down the fences of the law, that 
base rioters may walk unimpeded, to their work of 
vengeance, or unjust mercy? A sickly sentimental- 
ity too often enervates the administration of justice : 
and the pardoning power becomes the master-key 
to let out unwashed, unrepentant criminals. They 
have fleeced us, robbed us, and are ulcerous sores 
to the body politic; yet our heart turns to water 
over their merited punishment. A fine young fel- 
low, by accident, writes another's name for his own; 
by a mistake equally unfortunate, he presents it at 
the bank ; innocently draws out the large amount ; 
generously spends a part, and absent-mindedly hides 
7 



I 



74 TWELVE CAUSES 

the rest. Hard-hearted wretches there are, who 
would punish him for this ! Young men, admiring 
the neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, and 
curse a stupid jury that knew no better than to send 
to a penitentiary, him, whose skill deserved a cashier- 
ship. He goes to his cell, the pity of a whole me- 
tropolis. Bulletins from Sing-Sing inform us daily 
what Edwards is doing, as if he were Napoleon at 
St. Helena. At length pardoned, he will go forth 
again to a renowned liberty ! 

If there be one way quicker than another, by 
which the Executive shall assist crime, and our 
laws foster it, it is that course which assures every 
dishonest man, that it is easy to defraud, easy to 
avoid arrest, easy to escape punishment, and easiest 
of all to obtain a pardon. 

12. Commercial speculations are prolific of Dis- 
honesty. Speculation is the risking of capital in 
enterprises greater than we can control, or in enter- 
prises whose elements are not at all calculable. All 
calculations of the future are uncertain; but those 
which are based upon long experience approximate 
certainty, while those which are drawn by sagacity 
from probable events, are notoriously unsafe. Un- 
less, however, some venture, we shall forever tread 
an old and dull path ; therefore enterprise is allowed 
to pioneer new ways. The safe enterpriser explores 



: 




OF DISHONESTY. . 75 

cautiously, ventures at first a little, and increases 
the venture with the ratio of experience. A specu- 
lator looks out upon the new region, as upon a 
far-away landscape, whose features are softened to 
beauty by distance; upon a hope, he stakes that, 
which, if it wins, will make him ; and if it loses, 
will ruin him. When the alternatives are victory, 
or utter destruction, a battle may, sometimes, still 
be necessary. But commerce has no such alterna- 
tives ; only speculation proceeds upon them. 

If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon 
such ventures, to risk, as to lose it. Should a man 
borrow a noble steed and ride among incitements 
which he knew would rouse up his fiery spirit to an 
uncontrolable height, and borne away with wild 
speed, be plunged over a precipice, his destruction 
might excite our pity, but could not alter our opinion 
of his dishonesty. He borrowed property, and en- 
dangered it where he knew that it would be uncon- 
trolable. 

If the capital be one's own, it can scarcely be 
risked and lost, without the ruin of other men. No 
man could blow up his store in a compact street, 
and destroy only his own. Men of business are, 
like threads of a fabric, woven together, and subject, 
to a great extent, to a common fate of . prosperity 
or adversity. I have no right to cut off my hand ; 



76 TWELVE CAUSES 

I defraud myself, my family, the community, and 
God ; for all these have an interest in that hand. 
Neither has a man the right to throw away his 
property. He defrauds himself, his family, the 
community in which he dwells; for all these have 
an interest in that property. If waste is dishon- 
esty, then every risk, in proportion as it approaches 
it, is dishonest. To venture, without that foresight 
which experience gives, is wrong ; and if we cannot 
foresee, then we must not venture. 

Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and 
almost necessitates dishonesty. He who puts his 
own interests to rash ventures, will scarcely do 
better for others. The Speculator regards the 
weightiest affair as only a splendid game. Indeed, 
a Speculator on the exchange, and a Gambler at his 
table, follow one vocation, only with different in- 
struments. One employs cards or dice, the other 
property. The one can no more foresee the result 
of his schemes, than the other what spots will come 
up on his dice ; the calculations of both are only the 
chances of luck. Both burn with unhealthy excite- 
ment ; both are avaricious of gains, but careless of 
what they win; both depend more upon fortune than 
skill; they have a common distaste for labor; with 
each, right and wrong are only the accidents of a 
game ; neither would scruple in any hour to set his 



OF DISHONESTY. 77 

whole being on the edge of ruin, and going over, to 
pull down, if possible, a hundred others. 

The wreck of such men leaves them with a 
drunkard's appetite, and a fiend's desperation. The 
revulsion from extravagant hopes, to a certainty of 
midnight darkness ; the sensations of poverty, to 
him who was in fancy just stepping upon a princely 
estate ; the humiliation of gleaning for cents, where 
he has been profuse of dollars ; the chagrin of seeing 
old competitors now above him, grinning down 
upon his poverty a malignant triumph ; the pity of 
pitiful men, and the neglect of such as should have 
been his friends, — and who were, while the sun- 
shine lay upon his path, — all these things, like so 
many strong winds, sweep across the soul so that it 
cannot rest in the cheerless tranquillity of honesty, 
but casts up mire and dirt. How stately the balloon 
rises and sails over continents, as over petty land- 
scapes ! The slightest slit in its frail covering, 
sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, whirling 
and pitching hither and thither, until it plunges into 
some dark glen, out of the path of honest men, 
and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So have 
we seen a thousand men pitched down ; so now, in 
a thousand places may their wrecks be seen. But 
still other balloons are framing, and the air is full 
of victim- venturers. 
7* 



78 TWELVE CAUSES 

If our young men are introduced to life with dis- 
taste for safe ways, because the sure profits are 
slow ; if the opinion becomes prevalent that all 
business is great, only as it tends to the uncertain, 
the extravagant, and the romantic; then we may 
i stay our hand at once, nor waste labor in absurd 
expostulations of honesty. I had as lief preach 
humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty 
and integrity upon those who have determined to be 
rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and mad- 
men's ventures. 

All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless 
compared with a bankruptcy of public morals. 
Should the Atlantic ocean break over our shores, 
and roll sheer across to the Pacific, sweeping every 
vestige of cultivation, and burying our wealth, it 
would be a mercy, compared to that ocean-deluge 
of dishonesty and crime, which, sweeping over the 
whole land, has spared our wealth and taken our 
virtue. What are cornfields and vineyards, what 
are stores and manufactures, and what are gold and 
silver, and all the precious commodities of the earth, 
among beasts ? — and what are men, bereft of con- 
science and honor, but beasts? 

We will forget those things which are behind, 
and hope a more cheerful future. We turn to you, 
young men ! — All good men, all patriots, turn to 



OF DISHONESTY. 79 

watch your advance upon the stage, and to implore 
you to be worthy of yourselves, and of your revered 
ancestry. Oh ! ye favored of Heaven ! with a free 
land, a noble inheritance of wise laws, and a prodi- 
gality of wealth in prospect, — advance to your pos- 
sessions ! — May you settle down, as did Israel of old, 
a people of God in a promised and protected land ; 
— true to yourselves, true to your country, and true 
to your God. 



LECTURE III. 



The generation of the upright shall be blessed, wealth and riches shall be 

in his house. Ps. cxii. 2, 3. 
He that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of 

his days, and at the end shall be a fool. Jer. xvii. 11. 

When justly obtained, and rationally used, riches 
are called a gift of God, an evidence of his favor, 
and a great reward. When gathered unjustly, and 
corruptly used, wealth is pronounced a canker, a 
rust, a fire, a curse. There is no contradiction, 
then, when the Bible persuades to industry, and in- 
tegrity, by a promise of riches ; and then dissuades 
from wealth, as a terrible thing, destroying soul 
and body. Blessings are vindictive to abusers, and 
kind to rightful users; — they serve us, or rule us. 
Fire warms our dwelling, or consumes it. Steam 
serves man, and also destroys him. Iron, in the 
plough, the sickle, the house, the ship, is indispen- 
sable. The dirk, the assassin's knife, the cruel 
sword and the spear, are iron also. 

The constitution of man, and of society, alike 



SIX WARNINGS. 81 

evinces the design of God. Both are made to be 
happier by the possession of riches ; — their full de- 
velopment and perfection are dependent, to a large 
extent, upon wealth. Without it, there can be 
neither books nor implements ; neither commerce 
nor arts, neither towns nor cities. It is a folly to 
denounce that, a love of which God has placed in 
man by a constitutional faculty ; that, with which 
he has associated high grades of happiness; that, 
which has motives touching every faculty of the 
mind. Wealth is an artist : by its patronage men 
are encouraged to paint, to carve, to design, to build 
and adorn ; — A master-mechanic : and inspires man 
to invent, to discover, to apply, to forge, and to fash- 
ion : — A husbandman : and under its influence men 
rear the flock, till the earth, plant the vineyard, the 
field, the orchard, and the garden : — A manufactur- 
er : and teaches men to card, to spin, to weave, to 
color and dress all useful fabrics : — A merchant : 
and sends forth ships, and fills ware-houses with 
their returning cargoes gathered from every zone. 
It is the scholar's patron; sustains his leisure, re- 
wards his labor, builds the college, and gathers the 
library. 

Is a man weak ? — he can buy the strong. Is he 
ignorant 7 — the learned will serve his wealth. Is he 
rude of speech? — he may procure the advocacy 



82 SIX WARNINGS. 

of the eloquent. The rich cannot buy honor, but 
honorable places they can; they cannot purchase 
nobility, but they may its titles. Money cannot buy 
freshness of heart, but it can every luxury which 
tempts to enjoyment. Laws are its body-guard, and 
no earthly power may safely defy it; either while 
running in the swift channels of commerce, or repo- 
sing in the reservoirs of ancient families. Here is a 
wonderful thing, that an inert metal, which neither 
thinks, nor feels, nor stirs, can set the whole world 
to thinking, planning, running, digging, fashioning, 
and drives on the sweaty mass with never-ending 
labors ! 

Avarice seeks gold, not to build or buy therewith ; 
not to clothe or feed itself; not to make it an instru- 
ment of wisdom, of skill, of friendship, or religion. 
Avarice seeks it to heap it up ; to walk around the 
pile, and gloat upon it ; to fondle, and court, to kiss 
and hug the darling stuff to the end of life, with the 
homage of idolatry. 

Pride seeks it ; — for it gives power, and place, and 
titles, and exalts its possessor above his fellows. To 
be a thread in the fabric of life, just like any other 
thread, hoisted up and down by the treddle, played 
across by the shuttle, and woven tightly into the 
piece, this may suit humility, but not pride. 

Vanity seeks it; — what else can give it costly 



SIX WARNINGS. 83 

clothing, and rare ornaments, and stately dwellings, 
and showy equipage* and attract admiring eyes to 
its gaudy colors and costly jewels ? 

Taste seeks it ; — because by it, may be had what- 
ever is beautiful, or refining, or instructive. What 
leisure has poverty for study, and how can it collect 
books, manuscripts, pictures, statues, coins, or curi- 
osities ? 

Love seeks it ; — to build a home full of delights 
for father, wife or child ; and, wisest of all, 

Religion seeks it ; — to make it the messenger and 
servant of benevolence, to want, to suffering, and to 
ignorance. 

What a sight does the busy world present, as of a 
great workshop, where hope and fear, love and 
pride, and lust, and pleasure, and avarice, separate 
or in partnership, drive on the universal race for 
wealth : delving in the mine, digging in the earth, 
sweltering at the forge, plying the shuttle, ploughing 
the waters; in houses, in shops, in stores, on the 
mountain-side, or in the valley ; by skill, by labor, 
by thought, by craft, by force, by traffic ; all men, 
in all places, by all labors, fair and unfair, the world 
around, busy, busy ; ever searching for wealth that 
wealth may supply their pleasures. 

As every taste and inclination may receive its 
gratification through riches, the universal and often 



84 SIX WARNINGS. 

fierce pursuit of it arises, not from the single impulse 
of avarice, but from the impulse of the whole mind ; 
and on this very account, its pursuits should be more 
exactly regulated. Let me set up a warning over 
against the special dangers which lie along the road 

to RICHES. 

I. I warn you against thinking that riches neces- 
sarily confer happiness ; and poverty, unhappiness. 
Do not begin life supposing that you shall be heart- 
rich, when you are purse-rich. A man's happiness 
depends primarily upon his disposition ; if that be 
good, riches will bring pleasure ; but only vexation, 
if that be evil. To lavish money upon shining 
trifles, to make an idol of one's self for fools to 
gaze at, to rear mansions beyond our wants, to gar- 
nish them for display and not for use, to chatter 
through the heartless rounds of pleasure, to lounge, 
to gape, to simper and giggle: — can wealth make 
vanity happy by such folly ? If wealth descends 
upon avarice, does it confer happiness? It blights 
the heart, as autumnal fires ravage the prairies ! 
The eye glows with greedy cunning, conscience 
shrivels, the light of love goes out, and the wretch 
moves amidst his coin no better, no happier than a 
loathsome reptile in a mine of gold. A dreary fire 
of self-love burns in the bosom of the avaricious 
rich, as a hermit's flame in a ruined temple of the 



SIX WARNINGS. 85 

desert. The fire is kindled for no deity, and is 
odorous with no incense, but only warms the shiv- 
ering anchorite. 

Wealth will do little for lust, but to hasten its 
corruption. There is no more happiness in a foul 
heart, than there is health in a pestilent morass. 
Satisfaction is not made out of such stuff as fighting 
carousals, obscene revelry, and midnight orgies. An 
alligator, gorging or swoln with surfeit and basking 
in the sun, has the same happiness which riches 
bring to the man who eats to gluttony, drinks to 
drunkenness, and sleeps to stupidity. But riches 
indeed bless that heart whose almoner is benevo- 
lence. If the taste is refined, if the affections are 
pure, if conscience is honest, if charity listens to the 
needy, and generosity relieves them ; if the public- 
spirited hand fosters all that embellishes and all that 
ennobles society — then is the rich man happy. 

On the other hand, do not suppose that poverty is 
a waste and howling wilderness. There is a pov- 
erty of vice — mean, loathsome, covered with all the 
sores of depravity. There is a poverty of indolence 
— where virtues sleep, and passions fret and bicker. 
There is a poverty which despondency makes — a 
deep dungeon, in which the victim wears hopeless 
chains. May God save you from that ! There is a 
spiteful and venomous poverty, in which mean and 
8 



86 SIX WARNINGS. 

cankered hearts, repairing none of their own losses, 
spit at others' prosperity, and curse the rich, — them 
selves doubly cursed by their own hearts. 

But there is a contented poverty, in which indus 
try and peace rule ; and a joyful hope, which looks 
out into another world where riches shall neither fly 
nor fade. This poverty may possess an independent 
mind, a heart ambitious of usefulness, a hand quick 
to sow the seed of other men's happiness, and find its 
own joy in their enjoyment. If a serene age finds 
you in such poverty, it is such a wilderness, if it be 
a wilderness, as that in which God led his chosen 
people, and on which he rained every day a heavenly 
manna. 

If God open to your feet the way to wealth, enter 
it cheerfully ; but remember that riches will bless or 
curse you, as your own heart determines. But if 
circumscribed by necessity, you are still indigent, 
after all your industry, do not scorn poverty. There 
is often in the hut more dignity than in the palace ; 
more satisfaction in the poor man's scanty fare than 
in the rich man's satiety. 

II. Men are warned in the Bible against making 
haste to be rich. He that hasteth to be rich hath an 
evil eye, and consider eth not that poverty shall come 
upon him. This is spoken, not of the alacrity of 
enterprise, but of the precipitancy of avarice. That 



: 



SIX WARNINGS. 87 

is an evil eye which leads a man into trouble by 
incorrect vision. When a man seeks to prosper by 
crafty tricks instead of careful industry; when a 
man's inordinate covetousness pushes him across all 
lines of honesty that he may sooner clutch the prize : 
when gambling speculation would reap where it had 
not strewn ; when men gain riches by crimes — there 
is an evil eye, which guides them through a spe- 
cious prosperity, to inevitable ruin. So dependent 
is success upon patient industry, that he whe 1 seeks 
it otherwise, tempts his own ruin. A young lawyer, 
unwilling to wait for that practice which rewards 
a good reputation, or unwilling to earn that repu- 
tation by severe application, rushes through all the 
dirty paths of chicane to a hasty prosperity ; and he 
rushes out of it, by the dirtier paths of discovered 
villany. A young politician, scarcely waiting til] 
the law allows his majority, sturdily begs for thai 
popularity which he should have patiently earned. 
In the ferocious conflicts of political life, cunning, 
intrigue, falsehood, slander, vituperative violence, 
at first sustain his pretensions, and at last demolish 
them. It is thus in all the ways of traffic, in all 
the arts, and trades. That prosperity which grows 
like the mushroom, is as poisonous as the mush- 
room. Few men are destroyed ; but many destroy 
themselves. 



88 SIX WARNINGS. 

When God sends wealth to bless men he sends it 
gradually like a gentle rain. When God sends riches 
to punish men, they come tumultuously, like a roar- 
ing torrent, tearing up landmarks and sweeping all 
before them in promiscuous ruin. Almost every evil 
which environs the path to wealth, springs from 
that criminal haste which substitutes adroitness for 
industry, and trick for toil. 

III. Let me warn you against covetousness. 
Thou shalt not covet, is the law by which God 
sought to bless a favorite people. Covetousness is 
greediness of money. The Bible meets it with sig- 
nificant woes* by God's hatred^ by solemn warn- 
ings^ by denunciations ,§ by exclusion from Heaven.\\ 
This pecuniary gluttony comes upon the competitors 
for wealth insidiously. At first, business is only a 
means of paying for our pleasures. Vanity soon 
whets the appetite for money, to sustain her parad 
and competition, to gratify her piques and jealousies, 
Pride throws in fuel for a brighter flame. Vindictive 
hatreds often augment the passion, until the whole 
soul glows as a fervid furnace, and the body is driven 
as a boat whose ponderous engine trembles with the 
utmost energy of steam. 

Covetousness is unprofitable. It defeats its o 

* Hab. ii. 9. t Ps. x. 3. t Luke xii. 15. § 1 Cor. v. 10, 11. Isai. 
vii. 17. || 1 Cor. vi. 10. 



: 



SIX WARNINGS. 89 

purposes. It breeds restless daring, where it is dan- 
gerous to venture. It works the mind to fever, so 
that its judgments are not cool, nor its calculations 
calm. Greed of money is like fire ; the more fuel it 
has, the hotter it burns. Everything conspires to 
intensify the heat. Loss excites by desperation, and 
gain by exhilaration. When there is fever in the 
blood, there is fire on the brain ; and courage turns 
to rashness, and rashness runs to ruin. 

Covetousness breeds misery. The sight of houses 
better than our own, of dress beyond our means, of 
jewels costlier than we may wear, of stately equip- 
age, and rare curiosities beyond our reach, these 
hatch the viper brood of covetous thoughts ; vexing 
the poor — who would be rich ; tormenting the rich 
— who would be richer. The covetous man pines 
to see pleasure; is sad in the presence of cheerful- 
ness ; and the joy of the world is his sorrow, be- 
cause all the happiness of others is not his. I do 
not wonder that God abhors* him. He inspects his 
heart, as he would a cave full of noisome birds, or 
a nest of rattling reptiles, and loathes the sight of 
its crawling tenants. To the covetous man life is a 
nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best 
he may. Mammon might build its palace on such a 
heart, and Pleasure bring all its revelry there, and 

* Ps. x. 3. 

8* 



90 SIX WARNINGS. 

Honor all its garlands — it would be like pleasures in 
a sepulchre, and garlands on a tomb. 

The creed of the greedy man is brief and consis- 
tent ; and unlike other creeds, is both subscribed and 
believed. The chief end of man is to glorify gold 
and enjoy it forever : life is a time afforded man to 
grow rich in : death, the winding up of speculations : 
heaven, a mart with golden streets : hell, a place 
where shiftless men are punished with everlasting 
poverty. 

God searched among the beasts for a fit emblem 
of contempt, to describe the end of a covetous 
prince : He shall be buried with the burial of an Ass, 
drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.* 
He whose heart is turned to greediness, who sweats 
through life under the load of labor only to heap up 
money, and dies without private usefulness, or a 
record of public service, is no better, in God's esti- 
mation, than a pack-horse, — a mule, — an ass; a 
creature for burdens, to be beaten, and worked and 
killed, and dragged off by another like him, aban- 
doned to the birds and forgotten. 

He is buried with the burial of an ass ! This 
is the miser's epitaph — and yours, young man ! if 
you earn it by covetousness ! 

IV. I warn you against selfishness. Of riches 

* Jer. xxii. 19. 






SIX WARNINGS. 91 

it is written : There is no good in them but for a 
man to rejoice and to do good in his life. If men 
absorb their property, it parches the heart so that it 
will not give forth blossoms and fruits, but only- 
thorns and thistles. If men radiate and reflect upon 
others some rays of the prosperity which shines 
upon themselves, wealth is not only harmless, but 
full of advantage. 

The thoroughfares of wealth are crowded by a 
throng who jostle, and thrust, and conflict, like men 
in the tumult of a battle. The rules which crafty 
old men breathe into the ears of the young are full 
of selfish wisdom ; — teaching them that the chief 
^nd of man is to harvest, to husband, and to hoard. 
Their life is made obedient to a scale of preferences 
graded from a sordid experience; a scale which 
has penury for one extreme, and parsimony for the 
other ; and the virtues are ranked between them as 
they are relatively fruitful in physical thrift. Every 
crevice of the heart is caulked with costive maxims, 
so that no precious drop of wealth may leak out 
through inadvertent generosities. Indeed, gener- 
osity and all its company are thought to be little 
better than pilfering picklocks, against whose wiles 
the heart is prepared, like a coin-vault, with iron- 
clenched walls of stone, and impenetrable doors. 
Mercy, pity, and sympathy, are vagrant fowls ; and 



92 SIX WARNINGS. 

that they may not scale the fence between a man 
and his neighbors, their wings are clipped by the 
miser's master-maxim — Charity begins at home. It 
certainly stays there. 

The habit of regarding men as dishonest rivals, 
dries up, also, the kindlier feelings. A shrewd traf- 
ficker must watch his fellows, be suspicious of their 
proffers, vigilant of their movements, and jealous of 
their pledges. The world's way is a very crooked 
way, and a very guileful one. Its travellers creep 
by stealth, or walk craftily, or glide in conceal- 
ments, or appear in specious guises. He who stands 
out-watching among men, to pluck bis advantage 
from their hands, or to lose it by their wiles, comes 
at length to regard all men as either enemies or 
instruments. Of course he thinks it fair to strip an 
enemy ; and just as fair to use an instrument. Men 
are no more to him than bales, boxes, or goods — 
mere matters of traffic. If he ever relaxes his com- 
mercial rigidity to indulge in the fictions of poetry, 
it is when, perhaps on Sundays or at a funeral, he 
talks quite prettily about friendship, and generosity, 
and philanthropy. The tightest ship may leak in 
a storm, and an unbartered penny may escape from 
this man, when the surprise of the solicitation gives 
no time for thought. 

The heart cannot wholly petrify without some 



SIX WARNINGS. 93 

honest revulsions. Opiates are administered to it. 
This business-man tells his heart that it is beset by 
unscrupulous enemies ; that beneficent virtues are 
doors to let them in ; that liberality is bread given 
to one's foes; and selfishness only self-defence. At 
the same time, he enriches the future with generous 
promises. While he is getting rich, he cannot 
afford to be liberal ; but when once he is rich, ah ! 
how liberal he means to be ! — as though habits could 
be unbuckled like a girdle, and were not rather 
steel-bands riveted, defying the edge of any man's 
resolution, and clasping the heart with invincible 
servitude ! 

Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes en- 
joyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for 
wealth is like a citadel stormed in war. The ban- 
ner of victory waves over dilapidated walls, deso- 
late chambers, and magazines riddled with artillery. 
Men, covered with sweat, and begrimed with toil, 
expect to find joy in a heart reduced by selfishness 
to a smouldering heap of ruins. 

I warn every aspirant for wealth against the in- 
fernal canker of selfishness. It will eat out of the 
heart with the fire of hell, or bake it harder than a 
stone. The heart of avaricious old age stands like 
a bare rock in a bleak wilderness, and there is no 
rod of authority, nor incantation of pleasure, which 



94 SIX WARNINGS. 

can draw from it one crystal drop to quench the 
raging thirst for satisfaction. But listen not to my 
words alone; hear the solemn voice of God, pro- 
nouncing doom upon the selfish : Your riches are 
corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your 
gold and silver is cankered ; and the rust of them 
shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your 
flesh as it were fire.* 

V. I warn you against seeking wealth by cov- 
ert dishonesty. The everlasting plea of petty 
fraud or open dishonesty, is, its necessity or profita- 
bleness. 

It is neither necessary nor profitable. The hope 
is a deception, and the excuse a lie. The severity 
of competition affords no reason for dishonesty in 
word or deed. Competition is fair, but not all meth- 
ods of competition. A mechanic may compete with 
a mechanic, by rising earlier, by greater industry, 
by greater skill, more punctuality, greater thorough- 
ness, by employing better materials ; by a more 
scrupulous fidelity to promises, and by facility in 
accommodation. A merchant may study to excel 
competitors, by a better selection of goods, by more 
obliging manners, by more rigid honesty, by a bet- 
ter knowledge of the market, by better taste in the 
arrangement of his goods. Industry, honesty, kind- 

* James v. 2, 3. 



SIX WARNINGS. 95 

ness, taste, genius and skill, are the only materials 
of all rightful competition. 

But whenever you have exerted all your knowl- 
edge, all your skill, all your industry, with long 
continued patience and without success, then, it is 
clear, not that you may proceed to employ trick and 
cunning, but that you must stop. God has put 
before you a bound which no man may overleap. 
There may be the appearance of gain on the kna- 
vish side of the wall of honor. Traps are always 
baited with food sweet to the taste of the intended 
victim; and Satan is too crafty a trapper not to 
scatter the pitfall of dishonesty with some shining 
particles of gold. 

But what if fraud toere necessary to permanent 
success ? will you take success upon such terms ? I 
perceive, too often, that young rpen regard the ar- 
gument as ended, when they prove to themselves 
that they cannot be rich without guile. Very well ; 
then be poor. But if you prefer money to honor, 
you may well swear fidelity to the villain's law ! 
If it is not base and detestable to gain by equivoca- 
tion, neither is it by lying ; and if not by lying, 
neither is it by stealing ; and if not by stealing, 
neither by robbery or murder. Will you tolerate 
the loss of honor and honesty for the sake of profit '? 
For exactly this, Judas betrayed Christ, and Arnold 



96 SIX WARNINGS. 

his country. Because it is the only way to gain 
some pleasure, may a wife yield her honor ? — a pol- 
itician sell himself? — a statesman barter his coun- 
sel? — a judge take bribes? — a juryman forswear 
himself? — or a witness commit perjury? Then vir- 
tues are marketable commodities, and may be hung 
up, like meat in the shambles, or sold at auction to 
the highest bidder. 

Who can afford a victory gained by a defeat of his 
virtue ? What prosperity can compensate the plun- 
dering of a man's heart ? A good name is rather to be 
chosen than great riches : sooner or later every man 
will find it so. 

With what dismay would Esau have sorrowed 
for a lost birthright, had he lost also the pitiful mess 
of pottage for which he sold it ? With what double 
despair would Judas have clutched at death, if he 
had not obtained even the thirty pieces of silver 
which were to pay his infamy? And with what 
utter confusion will all dishonest men, who 'were 
learning of the Devil to defraud other men, find at 
length, that he was giving his most finished lesson 
of deception, — by cheating them! and making pov- 
erty and disgrace the only fruit of the lies and frauds 
which were framed for profit ! Getting treasure by 
a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them 
that seek death. 



SIX WARNINGS. 97 

Men have only looked upon the beginning of a 
career when they pronounce upon the profitableness 
of dishonesty. Many a ship goes gaily out of harbor 
which never returns again. That only is a good 
voyage which brings home the richly freighted ship. 
God explicitly declares that an inevitable curse of 
dishonesty shall fall upon the criminal himself, or 
upon his children : He that by usury, and unjust 
gain, increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for 
him that will pity the poor. His children are far 
from safety, and they are crushed in the gate. 
Neither is there any to deliver them, : the robber stval- 
loweth up their substance. 

Iniquities, whose end is dark as midnight, are 
permitted to open bright as the morning ; the most 
poisonous bud unfolds with brilliant colors. So the 
threshold of perdition is burnished till it glows like 
the gate of paradise. There is a way which seemeth 
right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways 
of death. This is dishonesty described to the life. 
At first you look down upon a smooth and verdant 
path covered with flowers, perfumed with odors, 
and overhung with fruits and grateful shade. Its 
long perspective is illusive; for it ends quickly in a 
precipice, over which you pitch into irretrievable 
ruin. 

For the sources of this inevitable disaster, we need 
9 



98 SIX WARNINGS. 

look no further than the effect of dishonesty upon a 
man's own mind. The difference between cunning 
and wisdom, is the difference between acting by the 
certain and immutable laws of nature, and acting by 
the shifts of temporary expedients. An honest man 
puts his prosperity upon the broad current of those 
laws which govern the world. A crafty man means 
to pry between them, to steer across them, to take 
advantage of them. An honest man steers by God's 
chart; and a dishonest man by his own. Which 
is the most liable to perplexities and fatal mistakes 
of judgment ? Wisdom steadily ripens to the end ; 
cunning is worm-bitten, and soon drops from the 
tree. 

I could repeat the names of many men, (every 
village has such, and they swarm in cities,) who are 
skilful, indefatigable, but audaciously dishonest ; and 
for a time they seemed going straight forward to the 
realm of wealth. I never knew a single one to avoid 
ultimate ruin. Men who act under dishonest pas- 
sions, are like men riding fierce horses. It is not 
always with the rider when or where he shall stop. 
If for his sake, the steed dashes wildly on while the 
road is smooth ; so, turning suddenly into a rough 
and dangerous way, the rider must go madly for- 
ward for the steed's sake, — now chafed, his mettle 
up, his eye afire, and beast and burden like a bolt 



SIX WARNINGS. 99 

speeding through the air, until some bound or sud- 
den fall tumble both to the ground — a crushed and 
mangled mass. 

A man pursuing plain ends by honest means may 
be troubled on every side, yet not distressed: per- 
plexed, but not in despair : persecuted, but not for- 
saken : cast down, but not destroyed. But those that 
pursue their advantage by a round of dishonesties, 
when fear cometh as a desolation, and destruction as 
a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon 
them, . . . shall eat of the fruit of their own way, 
and be filled with their own devices ; for the turning 
away of the simple shall slay them ; and the prosper- 
ity of fools shall destroy them. 

VI. The Bible overflows with warnings to those 
who gain wealth by violent extortion, or by any 
flagrant villany. Some men stealthily slip from 
under them the possessions of the poor. Some be- 
guile the simple and heedless of their patrimony. 
Some tyrannize over ignorance, and extort from it 
its fair domains. Some steal away the senses, and 
intoxicate the mind — the more readily and largely to 
cheat ; some set their traps in all the dark places of 
men's adversity, and prowl for wrecks all along the 
shores on which men's fortunes go to pieces. Men 
will take advantage of extreme misery, to wring it 
with more griping tortures, and compel it to the 



100 SIX WARNINGS. 

extremest sacrifices ; and stop only when no more can 
be borne by the sufferer, or nothing more extracted 
by the usurer. The earth is as full of avaricious 
monsters, as the tropical forests are of beasts of prey. 
But amid all the lions, and tigers, and hyenas, is seen 
the stately bulk of three huge Behemoths. 

The first Behemoth is that incarnate fiend who 
navigates the ocean to traffic in human misery and 
freight with the groans and tears of agony. Distant 
shores are sought with cords and manacles ; villages 
surprised with torch and sword ; and the loathsome 
ship swallows what the sword and the fire have 
spared. By night and day the voyage speeds, and 
the storm spares wretches more relentless than 
itself. The wind wafts and the sun lights the path 
for a ship Avhose log is written in blood. Hideous 
profits, dripping red, even at this hour, lure these 
infernal miscreants to their remorseless errands. 
The thirst of gold inspires such courage, skill, and 
cunning vigilance, that the thunders of four allied 
navies cannot sink the infamous fleet. 

What wonder ? Just such a Behemoth of rapac- 
ity stalks among us, and fattens on the blood of our 
sons. Men there are, who, without a pang or gleam 
of remorse, will coolly wait for character to rot, and 
health to sink, and means to melt, that they may 
suck up the last drop of the victim's blood. Our 



SIX WARNINGS. 101 

streets are full of reeling wretches whose bodies and 
manhood and souls have been crushed and put to 
the press, that monsters might wring out of them a 
wine for their infernal thirst. The agony of mid- 
night massacre, the phrensy of the ship's dungeon, 
the living death of the middle passage, the wails of 
separation, and the dismal torpor of hopeless servi- 
tude — are these found only in the piracy of the slave 
trade ? They all are among us ! worse assassina- 
tions ! worse dragging to a prison-ship ! worse 
groans ringing from the fetid hold ! worse separ- 
ations of families! worse bondage of intemperate 
men, enslaved by that most inexorable of all task- 
masters — sensual habit ! 

The third Behemoth is seen lurking among the 
Indian savages, and bringing the arts of learning, 
and the skill of civilization, to aid in plundering the 
debauched barbarian. The cunning, murdering, 
scalping Indian, is no match for the Christian white- 
man. Compared with the midnight knavery of men 
reared in schools, rocked by religion, tempered and 
taught by the humane institutions of liberty and 
civilization, all the craft of the savage is twilight. 
Vast estates have been accumulated, without hav- 
ing an honest farthing in them. Our Penitentiaries 
might be sent to school to the Treaty-grounds and 
Council-grounds. Smugglers and swindlers might 
9* 



102 SIX WARNINGS. 

humble themselves in the presence of Indian traders. 
All the crimes against property known to our laws 
flourish with unnatural vigor ; and some, unknown 
to civilized villany. To swindle ignorance, to over- 
reach simplicity, to lie without scruple to any extent, 
from mere implication down to perjury ; to tempt 
the savages to rob each other, and to receive their 
plunder; to sell goods at incredible prices to the 
sober Indian, then to intoxicate him, and steal them 
all back by a sham bargain, to be sold again, and 
stolen again; to employ falsehood, lust, threats, 
whisky, and even the knife and the pistol ; in short 
to consume the Indian's substance by every vice and 
crime possible to an unprincipled heart inflamed 
with an insatiable rapacity, unwatched by Justice, 
and unrestrained by Law — this it is to be an Indian 
Trader. I would rather inherit the bowels of Vesu- 
vius, or make my bed in Etna, than own those estates 
which have been scalped off from human beings as 
the hunter strips a beaver of its fur. Of all these, of 
all who gain possessions by extortion and robbery, 
never let yourself be envious ! I was envious at the 
foolish, ivhen I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 
Their eyes stand out with fatness : they have more 
than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak 
wickedly concerning oppression. They have set 
their mouth against the heaven, and their tongue 



SIX WARNINGS. 103 

walketh through the earth. When I sought to know 
this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the 
sanctuary. Surely thou didst set them in slippery 
places ! thou castedst them down into destruction as 
in a moment ! They are utterly consumed with ter- 
rors. As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord! 
when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image ! 

I would not bear their heart who have so made 
money, were the world a solid globe of gold, and 
mine. I would not stand for them in the judgment, 
were every star of heaven a realm of riches, and 
mine. I would not walk with them the burning 
marl of hell, to bear their torment, and utter their 
groans, for the throne of God itself. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. 
Riches got by deceit, cheat no man so much as the 
getter. Riches bought with guile, God will pay for 
with vengeance. Riches got by fraud, are dug out 
of one's own heart, and destroy the mine. Unjust 
riches curse the owner in getting, in keeping, in 
transmitting. They curse his children in their fath- 
er's memory, in their own wasteful habits, in drawing 
around them all bad men to be their companions. 

While I do not discourage your search for wealth, 
I warn you that it is not a cruise upon level seas, and 
under bland skies. You advance where ten thou- 
sand are broken in pieces before they reach the 



104 SIX WARNINGS. 

mart; where those who reach it are worn out, by 
their labors, past enjoying their riches. You seek a 
land pleasant to the sight, but dangerous to the feet ; 
a land of fragrant winds, which lull to security ; of 
golden fruits, which are poisonous ; of glorious hues, 
which dazzle and mislead. 

You may be rich and be pure ; but it will cost you 
a struggle. You may be rich and go to heaven ; but 
ten, doubtless, will sink beneath their riches, where 
one breaks through them to heaven. If you have 
entered this shining way, begin to look for snares 
and traps. Go not careless of your danger, and pro- 
voking it. See, on every side of you, how many 
there are who seal God's word with their blood : — 

They that will be rick, fall into temptation and a 
snare, and into many foolish and hurtfid lusts, which 
drown men in destruction and perdition. For the 
love of Money is the root of all evil, which, while 
some have coveted after, they have erred from the 
faith, and pierced themselves through with many 
sorrows. 



LECTURE IV. 



My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Prov. i. 10. 

He who is allured to embrace evil under some 
I engaging form of beauty, or seductive appearance 

of good, is enticed. A man is tempted to what he 
i knows to be sinful ; he is enticed where the evil 
I appears to be innocent. The Enticer wins his way 

by bewildering the moral sense, setting false lights 

ahead of the imagination, painting disease with the 
i hues of health, making impurity to glow like inno- 
i cency, strewing the broad-road with flowers, lulling 
\ its travellers with soothing music, hiding all its 
j chasms, covering its pitfalls, and closing its long 
i perspective with the mimic glow of Paradise. 

The young are seldom tempted to outright wick- 
\ edness ; evil comes to them as an enticement. The 
I honest generosity and fresh heart of youth would 
I revolt from open meanness and undisguised vice. 

The Adversary conforms his wiles to their nature. 



106 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

He tempts them to the basest deeds by beginning 
with innocent ones, gliding to more exceptionable, 
and finally, to positively wicked ones. All our 
warnings then must be against the vernal beauty of 
vice. Its autumn and winter none wish. It is my 
purpose to describe the enticement of particular men 
upon the young. 

Every youth knows that there are dangerous men 
abroad who would injure him by lying, by slander, 
by over-reaching and plundering him. From such 
they have little to fear, because they are upon their 
guard. Few imagine that they have anything to 
dread from those who have no designs against 
them ; yet such is the instinct of imitation, so insen- 
sibly does the example of men steal upon us and 
warp our conduct to their likeness, that the young 
often receive a deadly injury from men with whom 
they never spoke. As all bodies in nature give out 
or receive caloric until there is an equilibrium of 
temperature, so there is a radiation of character 
upon character. Our thoughts, our tastes, our emo- 
tions, our partialities, our prejudices, and finally, 
our conduct and habits, are insensibly changed by 
the silent influence of men who never once directly 
tempted us, or even knew the effect which they pro- 
duced. I shall draw for your inspection some of 
those dangerous men, whose open or silent entice- 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 107 

ment has availed against thousands, and will be 
exerted upon thousands more. 

I. The wit. It is sometimes said by phlegmatic 
theologians that Christ never laughed, but often 
wept. I shall not quarrel with the assumption. I 
only say that men have within them a faculty of 
mirthfulness which God created. I suppose it was 
meant for use. Those who do not feel the impul- 
sion of this faculty, are not the ones to sit in judg- 
ment upon those who do. It would be very absurd 
for an owl in an ivy bush, to read lectures on optics 
to an eagle ; or for a mole to counsel a lynx on the 
sin of sharp-sightedness. He is divinely favored 
who may trace a silver vein in all the affairs of 
life ; see sparkles of light in the gloomiest scenes ; 
and absolute radiance in those which are bright. 
There are in the clouds ten thousand inimitable 
forms and hues to be found nowhere else; there 
are in plants and trees beautiful shapes and endless 
varieties of color ; there are in flowers minute pen- 
cilings of exquisite shade; in fruits a delicate bloom, 
— like a veil, making the face of beauty more beau- 
tiful ; sporting among the trees, and upon the flow- 
ers, are tiny insects — gems which glow like living 
diamonds. Ten thousand eyes stare full upon these 
things and see nothing; and yet thus the Divine 
Artist has finished his matchless work. Thus, too, 



108 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

upon all the labors of life, the events of each hour, 
the course of good or evil; upon each action, or 
word, or attitude; upon all the endless changes 
transpiring among myriad men, there is a delicate 
grace, or bloom, or sparkle, or radiance, which 
catches the eye of Wit, and delights it with appear- 
ances which are to the weightier matters of life, 
what odor, colors, and symmetry, are to the market- 
able and commercial properties of matter. 

A mind imbued with this feeling is full of dancing 
motes, such as we see moving in sunbeams when 
they pour through some shutter into a dark room; 
and when the sights and conceptions of wit are 
uttered in words they diffuse upon others that plea- 
sure whose brightness shines upon its own cheerful 
imagination. 

It is not strange that the Wit is a universal favor- 
ite. All companies rejoice in his presence, watch 
for his words, repeat his language. He moves like 
a comet whose incomings and outgoings are uncon- 
trollable. He astonishes the regular stars with the 
eccentricity of his orbit, and flirts his long tail 
athwart the heaven without the slightest misgivings 
that it will be troublesome, and coquets the very 
sun with audacious familiarity. When wit is un- 
perverted, it lightens labor, makes the very face of 
care to shine, difIV> cheerfulness among men, mul- 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 109 

tiplies the sources of harmless enjoyment, gilds the 
dark things of life, and heightens the lustre of the 
brightest. If perverted, wit becomes an instrument 
of malevolence, it gives a deceitful coloring to vice, 
it reflects a semblance of truth upon error, and dis- 
torts the features of real truth by false lights. 

The Wit is liable to indolence by relying upon 
his genius ; to vanity, by the praise which is offered 
as incense; to malignant sarcasm, to revenge his 
affronts; to dissipation, from the habit of exhilara- 
tion, and from the company which court him. The 
mere Wit is only a human bauble. He is to life 
what bells are to horses, not expected to draw the 
load, but only to jingle while the horses draw. 

The young often repine at their own native dul- 
ness ; and since God did not choose to endow them 
with this shining quality, they will make it for 
themselves. Forthwith they are smitten with the 
itch of imitation. Their ears purvey to their mouth 
the borrowed jest; their eyes note the Wit's fashion, 
and the awkward youth clumsily apes, in a side 
circle, the Wit's deft and graceful gesture, the 
smooth smile, the roguish twinkle, the sly look — 
much as Caliban would imitate Ariel. Every com- 
munity is supplied with self-made Wits. One re- 
tails other men's sharp witticisms, as a Jew puts off 
j thread-bare garments. Another roars over his own 
10 



110 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

brutal quotations of Scripture. Another invents a 
witticism by a logical deduction of circumstances, 
and sniffs and giggles over the result as compla- 
cently as if other men laughed too. Others lie in 
wait around your conversation to trip up some word, 
or strike a light out of some sentence. Others fish 
in dictionaries for pitiful puns; — and all fulfil the 
prediction of Isaiah : Ye shall conceive chaff \ and 
bring forth stubble. 

It becomes a mania. Each school has its allu- 
sions, each circle has its apish motion, each compan- 
ionhood its park of wit-artillery ; and we find street- 
wit, shop-wit, auction-wit, school-wit, fool's-wit, 
whisky-wit, stable-wit, and almost every kind of 
wit, but mother- wit ; — puns, quibbles, catches, would- 
be-jests, thread-bare stories, and gew-gaw tinsel, — 
everything but the real diamond, which sparkles 
simply because God made it so that it could not 
help sparkling. Real, native mirthfulness is like a 
pleasant rill which quietly wells up in some verdant 
nook, and steals out from among reeds and willows 
noiselessly, and is seen far down the meadow, as 
much by the fruitfulness of its edges in flowers, as 
by its own glimmering light. 

Let every one beware of the insensible effect of 

J witty men upon him ; they gild lies, so that base 

coin may pass for true ; that which is grossly wrong, 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. Ill 

wit may make fascinating; when no argument 
could persuade you, the coruscations of wit may 
dazzle and blind you ; when duty presses you, the 
threatenings of this human lightning may make you 
afraid to do right. Remember that the very best 
office of wit, is only to lighten the serious labors 
of life ; that it is only a torch, by which men may 
cheer the gloom of a dark way. When it sets up to 
be your counsellor or your guide, it is the fool's 
fire, flitting irregularly and leading you into the 
quag or morass. The great Dramatist represents 
a witty sprite to have put an ass' head upon a 
man's shoulders; beware that you do not let this 
mischievous sprite put an ape's head upon yours. 

If God has not given you this quicksilver, no art 
can make it; nor need you regret it. The stone, 
the wood, and the iron are a thousand times more 
valuable to society than pearls and diamonds and 
rare gems; and sterling sense, and industry, and 
integrity, are better a thousand times, in the hard 
work of living, than the brilliance of wit. 

II. There is a character which I shall describe 
as the Humorist. I do not employ the term to desig- 
nate one who indulges in that pleasantest of all wit 
— latent wit; but to describe a creature who con- 
ceals a coarse animalism under a brilliant, jovial 
exterior. The dangerous humorist is of a plump 



112 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

condition, evincing the excellent digestion of a good 
eater, and answering very well to the Psalmist's de- 
scription: His eyes stand out with fatness ; he is 
not in trouble as other men are ; he has more than 
heart could wish^ and his tongue walketh through 
the earth. Whatever is pleasant in ease, whatever is 
indulgent in morals, whatever is solacing in luxury; 
the jovial few, the convivial many, the glass, the 
cards, the revel, and midnight uproar, — these are his 
delights. His manners are easy and agreeable; his 
face redolent of fun and good nature ; his whole air 
that of a man fond of the utmost possible bodily 
refreshment. Withal, he is sufficiently circumspect 
and secretive of his course, to maintain a place ir 
genteel society; for that is a luxury. He is not a 
glutton, but a choice eater. He is not a gross 
drinker, only a gentlemanly consumer of every curi- 
ous compound of liquor. He has travelled; he can 
tell you which, in every city, is the best bar, the 
best restaurateur, the best stable. He knows every 
theatre, each actor; particularly is he versed in the 
select morsels of the scandalous indulgence peculiar 
to each. He knows every race-course, every nag, the 
history of all the famous matches, and the pedigree 
of every distinguished horse. The whole vocabu- 
lary of pleasure is vernacular, — its wit, its slang, 
its watchwords, and blackletter literature. He is a 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 113 

profound annalist of scandal ; every stream of news, 
clear or muddy, disembogues into the gulf of his 
prodigious memory. He can tell you, after living 
but a week in a city, who gambles, when, for what 
sums, and with what fate; who is impure, who 
was, who is suspected, who is not suspected — but 
ought to be. He is a morbid anatomist of morals; 
a brilliant flesh-fly— unerring to detect taint. 

Like other men, he loves admiration and desires 
to extend his influence. All these manifold accom- 
plishments are exhibited before the callow young. 
That he may secure a train of useful followers, he 
is profuse of money ; and moves among them with 
an easy, insinuating frankness, a never-ceasing gai- 
ety, so spicy with fun, so diverting with stories, so 
full of little hits, sly innuendoes, or solemn wit, with 
now and then a rare touch of dexterous mimicry, 
and the whole so pervaded by the indescribable fla- 
vor, the changing hues of humor, — that the young 
are bewildered with idolatrous admiration. What 
gay young man, who is old enough to admire him- 
self and be ashamed of his parents, can resist a man 
so bedewed with humor, narrating exquisite stories 
with such mock gravity, with such slyness of mouth, 
and twinkling of the eye, with such grotesque atti- 
tudes, and significant gestures ? He is declared to 
be the most remarkable man in the world. Now 
10* 



114 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

take off this man's dress, put out the one faculty of 
mirthfulness, and he will stand disclosed without 
a single positive virtue ! With strong appetites 
deeply indulged, hovering perpetually upon the twi- 
light edge of every vice; and whose wickedness is 
only not apparent, because it is garnished with 
flowers and garlands ; who is not despised, only 
because his various news, artfully told, keep us in 
good humor with ourselves ! At one period of 
youthful life, this creature's influence supplants that 
of every other man. There is an absolute fascina- 
tion in him which awakens a craving in the mind 
to be of his circle; plain duties become drudgery, 
home has no light ; life at its ordinary key is mono- 
tonous, and must be screwed up to the concert pitch 
of this wonderful genius ! As he tells his stories, so 
with a wretched grimace of imitation, apprentices 
will try to tell them ; as he gracefully swings 
through the street, they will roll ; they will leer be- 
cause he stares genteelly ; he sips, they guzzle — and 
talk impudently, because he talks with easy confi- 
dence. He walks erect, they strut; he lounges, they 
loll ; he is less than a man, and they become even 
less than he. Copper-rings, huge blotches of breast- 
pins, wild streaming handkerchiefs, jaunty hats, odd 
clothes, superfluous walking-sticks, ill -uttered oaths, 
stupid jokes, and blundering pleasantries — these 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. lib 

are the first fruits of imitation ! There are various 
grades of it, from the office, store, shop, street, clear 
down to the hostlery and stable. Our cities are filled 
with these juvenile nondescript monsters, these com- 
pounds of vice, low wit, and vulgarity. The orig- 
inal is morally detestable, and the counterfeit is a 
very base imitation of a very base thing ; the dark 
shadow of a very ugly substance. 

III. The Cynic. The Cynic is one who never 
sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see 
a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in dark- 
ness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and 
never seeing noble game. The Cynic puts all human 
actions into only two classes — ope?ily bad, and se- 
cretly bad. All virtue and generosity and disinter- 
estedness are merely the appearance of good, but 
selfish at the bottom. He holds that no man does a 
good thing except for profit. The effect of his con- 
versation upon your feelings is to chill and sear 
them; to send you away sore and morose. His 
criticisms and innuendoes fall indiscriminately upon 
every lovely thing, like frost upon flowers. /if a 
man is said to be pure and chaste, he will answer : 
Yes, in the day time. If a woman is pronounced 
virtuous, he will reply: yes, as yet. Mr. A. is a 
religious man : yes, on Sundays. Mr. B. has just 
joined the church : certainly ; the elections are coming 



116 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

on. The minister of the gospel is called an example 
of diligence : It is his trade. Such a man is gener- 
ous : of other men's money. This man is obliging : 
to lull suspicion and cheat you. That man is upright : 
because he is green. Thus his eye strains out every 
good quality and takes in only the bad. To him 
religion is hypocrisy, honesty a preparation for 
fraud, virtue only want of opportunity, and unde- 
niable purity, asceticism. The live-long day he will 
coolly sit with sneering lip, uttering sharp speeches 
in the quietest manner, and in polished phrase, 
transfixing every character which is presented : 
His words are softer than oil, yet are they drawn 
swords. 

All this, to the young, seems a wonderful knowl- 
edge of human nature; they honor a man who 
appears to have found out mankind. They begin 
to indulge themselves in flippant sneers; and with 
supercilious brow, and impudent tongue, wagging to 
an empty brain, call to naught the wise, the long 
tried, and the venerable. 

I do believe that man is corrupt enough; but 
something of good has survived his wreck; some- 
thing of evil religion has restrained, and something 
partially restored ; yet, I look upon the human heart 
as a mountain of fire. I dread its crater. I tremble 
when I see its lava roll the fiery stream. Therefore, 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 117 

1 am the more glad, if upon the old crust of past 
eruptions, I can find a single flower springing up. 
So far from rejecting appearances of virtue in the 
corrupt heart of a depraved race, I am eager to see 
their light as ever mariner was to see a star in a 
stormy night. 

Moss will grow upon gravestones; the ivy will 
cling to the mouldering pile ; the mistletoe springs 
from the dying branch ; and, God be praised, some- 
thing green, something fair to the sight and grateful 
to the heart, will yet twine around and grow out of 
the seams and cracks of the desolate temple of the 
human heart ! 

Who could walk through Thebes, Palmyra, or 
Petraea, and survey the wide waste of broken arches, 
crumbled altars, fallen pillars, effaced cornices, top- 
pling walls, and crushed statues, with no feelings 
but those of contempt? Who, unsorrowing, could 
see the stork's nest upon the carved pillar, satyrs 
dancing on marble pavements, and scorpions nest- 
ling where beauty once dwelt, and dragons the sole 
tenants of royal palaces? Amid such melancholy 
magnificence, even the misanthrope might weep! 
If here and there an altar stood unbruised, or a 
graven column unblemished, or a statue nearly per- 
fect, he might wfell feel love for a man-wrought 
stone, so beautiful, when all else is so dreary and 



118 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

desolate. Thus, though man is as a desolate city, 
and his passions are as the wild beasts of the wilder- 
ness howling in kings' palaces, yet he is God's 
workmanship, and a thousand touches of exquisite 
beauty remain. Since Christ hath put his sovereign 
hand to restore man's ruin, many points are re- 
moulded, and the fair form of a new fabric already 
appears growing from the ruins, and the first faint 
flame is glimmering upon the restored altar. 

It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity 
of opinion upon our fellow-men, without injuring 
the tenderness and delicacy of our own feelings. A 
man will be what his most cherished feelings are. \ 
If he encourage a noble generosity, every feeling 
will be enriched by it; if he nurse bitter and en- 
venomed thoughts, his own spirit will absorb the 
poison; and he will crawl among men as a bur- 
nished adder, whose life is mischief, and whose 
errand is death. 

Although experience should correct the indiscrim- 
inate confidence of the young, no experience should 
render them callous to goodness wherever seen. He 
who hunts for flowers, will find flowers ; and he who 
loves weeds, may find weeds. Let it be remem- 
bered, that no man, who is not himself mortally 
diseased, will have a relish for disease in others. A 
swoln wretch, blotched all over with leprosy, may 






PORTRAIT GALLERY. 119 

grin hideously at every wart or excrescence upon 
beauty. A wholesome man will be pained at it, 
and seek not to notice it. Reject, then, the morbid 
ambition of the Cynic, or cease to call yourself a 
man! 

IV. I fear that few villages exist without a speci- 
men of the Libertine. 

His errand into this world is to explore every 
depth of sensuality, and collect upon himself the 
foulness of every one. He is proud to be vile ; his 
ambition is to be viler than other men. Were we 
not confronted almost daily by such wretches it 
would be hard to believe that any could exist, to 
whom purity and decency were a burden, and only 
corruption a delight. This creature has changed 
his nature, until only that which disgusts a pure 
mind pleases his. He is lured by the scent of car- 
rion. His coarse feelings, stimulated by gross exci- 
tants, are insensible to delicacy. The exquisite 
bloom, the dew and freshness of the flowers of the 
heart which delight both good men and God himself, 
he gazes upon, as a Behemoth would gaze enrap- 
tured upon a prairie of flowers. It is so much 
pasture. The forms, the odors, the hues are only a 
mouthful for his terrible appetite. Therefore, his 
breath blights every innocent thing. He sneers at 
the mention of purity, and leers in the very face of 



120 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

Virtue, as though she were herself corrupt, if the 
truth were known. He assures the credulous 
disciple that there is no purity; that its appear- 
ances are only the veils which cover indulgence. 
Nay, he solicits praise for the very openness of his 
evil ; and tells the listener that all act as he acts, but 
only few are courageous enough to own it. But the 
uttermost parts of depravity are laid open only when 
several such monsters meet together, and vie with 
each other, as we might suppose shapeless mud- 
monsters disport in the slimiest ooze of the ocean. 
They dive in fierce rivalry which shall reach the 
most infernal depth, and bring up the blackest sedi- 
ment. It makes the blood of an honest man rur 
cold, to hear but the echo of the shameless rehear- 
sals of their salacious enterprises. Each strives tc 
tell a blacker tale than the other. When the abom- 
ination of their actual life is not damnable enough to 
satisfy the ambition of their unutterable corruption, 
they devise, in their imagination, scenes yet more 
flagrant ; swear that they have performed them, and 
when they separate, each strives to make his lying 
boastings true. It would seem as if miscreants so 
loathsome would have no power of temptation 
upon the young. Experience shows that the worst 
men are, often, the most skilful in touching the 
springs of human action. A young man knows 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 121 

little of life; less of himself. He feels in his bosom 
the various impulses, wild desires, restless cravings 
he can hardly tell for what, a sombre melancholy 
when all is gay, a violent exhilaration when others 
are sober. These wild gushes of feeling, peculiar 
to youth, the sagacious tempter has felt, has studied, 
has practised upon, until he can sit before that most 
capacious organ, the human mind, knowing every 
stop, and all the combinations, and competent to 
touch any note through the diapason. As a ser- 
pent deceived the purest of mortals, so now a beast 
may mislead their posterity. He begins afar off. 
He decries the virtue of all men ; studies to produce 
a doubt that any are under self-restraint. He un- 
packs his filthy stories, plays off the fire-works of 
his corrupt imagination— its blue-lights, its red- 
lights, and green-lights, and sparkle-spitting lights ; 
and edging in upon the yielding youth, who begins 
to wonder at his experience, he boasts his first ex- 
ploits, he hisses at the purity of women; he grows 
yet bolder, tells more wicked deeds, and invents 
worse even than he ever performed, though he has 
performed worse than good men ever thought of. 
All thoughts, all feelings, all ambition, are merged 
in one and that the lowest, vilest, most detestable 
ambition. 

Had I a son of years, I could, with thanksgiving, 
11 



122 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

see him go down to the grave, rather than fall into 
the maw of this most besotted devil. The plague is 
mercy, the cholera is love, the deadliest fever is 
refreshment to man's body, in comparison with this 
epitome and essence of moral disease. He lives 
among men, Hell's ambassador with full creden- 
tials; nor can we conceive that there should be 
need of any other fiend to perfect the works of dark- 
ness, while he carries his body among us, stuffed 
with every pestilent drug of corruption. The heart 
of every virtuous young man should loathe him; if 
he speaks, you should as soon hear a wolf bark. 
Gather around you the venomous snake, the poison- 
ous toad, the fetid vulture, the prowling hyena, and 
their company would be an honor to you above his; 
for they at least remain within their own nature; 
but he goes out of his nature that he may become 
more vile than it is possible for a mere animal to be. 
He is hateful to religion, hateful to virtue, hateful 
to decency, hateful to the coldest morality. The 
stenchful ichor of his dissolved heart has flowed 
over every feeling of his nature, and left them as the 
burning lava leaves the garden, the orchard, and the 
vineyard. And it is a wonder that the bolt of God 
which crushed Sodom does not slay him. It is a 
I wonder that the earth does not refuse the burden 
and open and swallow him up. I do not fear that 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 123 

the young will be undermined by his direct assaults. 
But some will imitate, and their example will be 
again freely imitated, and finally, a remote circle 
of disciples will spread the diluted contagion among 
the virtuous. This man will be the fountain-head, 
and though none will come to drink at a hot spring, 
yet further down along the stream it sends out, will 
be found many scooping from its waters. 

V. I have described the devil in his native form, 
but he sometimes appears as an angel of light. 
There is a polished Libertine, in manners studi- 
ously refined, in taste faultless ; his face is mild and 
engaging; his words drop as pure as newly-made 
honey. In general society, he would rather attract 
regard as a model of purity, and suspicion herself 
could hardly look askance upon him. Under this 
brilliant exterior, his heart is like, a sepulchre, full 
of all uncleanness. Contrasted with the gross liber- 
tine, it would not be supposed that he had a thought 
in common with him. If his heart could be opened 
to our eyes, as it is to God's, we should perceive 
scarcely dissimilar feeling in respect to appetite. 
Professing unbounded admiration of virtue in gene- 
ral, he leaves not in private a point untransgressed. 
His reading has culled every glowing picture of amo- 
rous poets, every tempting scene of loose dramatists, 
and looser novelists. Enriched by these, his imagi- 



124 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

nation, like a rank soil, is overgrown with a prodi- 
gal luxuriance of poison-herbs and deadly flowers. 
Men, such as this man is, frequently aspire to be the 
censors of morality. They are hurt at the injudi- 
cious reprehensions of vice from the pulpit ! They 
make great outcry when plain words are employed 
to denounce base things. They are astonishingly 
sensitive and fearful lest good men should soil their 
hands with too much meddling with evil. Their 
cries are not the evidence of sensibility to virtue, but 
of too lively a sensibility to vice. Sensibility is, 
often, only the fluttering of an impure heart. 

At the very time that their voice is ringing an 
alarm against immoral reformations, they are se- 
cretly skeptical of every tenet of virtue, and practi- 
cally unfaithful to every one. Of these two liber- 
tines, the most I'ftined is the more dangerous. The 
one is a rattlesnake which carries its warning with 
it; the other, hiding his burnished scales in the 
grass, skulks to perform unsuspected deeds in dark- 
ness. The one is the visible fog and miasm of the 
morass; the other is the serene air of a tropical 
city, which, though brilliant, is loaded with invisible 
pestilence. 

The Politician. If there be a man on earth 
whose character should be framed of the most ster- 
ling honesty, and whose conduct should conform to 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 125 

the most scrupulous morality, it is the man who ad- 
ministers public affairs. The most romantic notions 
of integrity are here not extravagant. As, under 
our institutions, public men will be, upon the whole, 
fair exponents of the character of their constituents, 
the plainest way to secure honest public men, is to 
inspire those who make them, with a right under- 
standing of what political character ought to be. 
Young men should be prompted to descriminate be- 
tween the specious, and the real ; the artful, and the 
honest; the wise, and the cunning; the patriotic, and 
the pretender. I will sketch — 

VI. The Demagogue. The lowest of politicians 
is that man who seeks to gratify an invariable self- 
ishness by pretending to seek the public good. For 
a profitable popularity he accommodates himself to 
all opinions, to all dispositions, to every side, and 
to each prejudice. He is a mirror, with no face of 
its own, but a smooth surface from which each 
man of ten thousand may see himself reflected. He 
glides from man to man coinciding with their views, 
pretending their feelings, simulating their tastes : 
with this one, he hates a man ; with that one, he 
loves the same man ; he favors a law, and he dis- 
likes it ; he approves, and opposes ; he is on both 
sides at once, and seemingly wishes that he could 
be on one side more than both sides. He attends 
11* 



126 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

meetings to suppress intemperance, — but at elections 
makes every grog-shop free to all drinkers. He can 

• with equal relish plead most eloquently for temper- 
ance, or toss off a dozen glasses in a dirty grocery. 
He thinks that there is a time for everything, and 
therefore, at one time he swears and jeers and leers 

- with a carousing crew ; and at another time, having 
happily been converted, he displays the various fea- 
tures of devotion. Indeed, he is a capacious Chris- 
tian ; an epitome of faith. He piously asks the 
class-leader, of the welfare of his charge, for he was 
always a Methodist and always shall be, — until he 
meets a Presbyterian; then he is a Presbyterian, 
old-school or new, as the case requires. However, 
as he is not a bigot, he can afford to be a Baptist, in 
a good Baptist neighborhood, and with a wink he 
tells the zealous elder, that he never had one of his 
children baptized, not he ! He whispers to the Re- 
former that he abhors all creeds but Baptism and 
the Bible. After all this, room will be found in his 
heart for the fugitive sects also, which come and go 
like clouds in a summer sky. His flattering atten- 
tion at church edifies the simple-hearted preacher, 
who admires that a plain sermon should make a 
man whisper amen ! and weep. Upon the stumj 
his tact is no less rare. He roars and bawls with 
courageous plainness, on points about which all 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 127 

agree : but on subjects where men differ, his meaning 
is nicely balanced on a pivot that it may dip either 
way. He depends for success chiefly upon humor- 
ous stories. A glowing patriot a-telling stories is a 
dangerous antagonist ; for it is hard to expose the 
fallacy of a hearty laugh, and men convulsed with 
merriment are slow to perceive in what way an 
argument is a reply to a story. 

Perseverance, effrontery, good nature, and versa- 
tile cunning have advanced many a bad man higher 
than a good man could attain. Men will admit that 
he has not a single moral virtue; but he is smart. 
We object to no man for amusing himself at the 
fertile resources of the politician here painted ; for 
sober men are sometimes pleased with the grimaces 
and mischievous tricks of a versatile monkey ; but 
would it not be strange indeed if they should select 
him for a ruler, or make him an exemplar to their 
sons? 

VII. I describe next a more respectable and more 
dangerous politician — the Party Man. He has asso- 
ciated his ambition, his interests, and his affections 
with a party. He prefers, doubtless, that his side 
should be victorious by the best means, and under 
the championship of good men ; but rather than lose 
the victory, he will consent to any means, and follow 
any man. Thus, with a general desire to be upright, 



128 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

the exigency of his party constantly pushes him to 
dishonorable deeds. He opposes fraud by craft; 
lie, by lie; slander, by counter-aspersion. To be 
sure it is wrong to mis-state, to distort, to suppress 
or color facts ; it is wrong to employ the evil pas- 
sions j to set class against class ; the poor against the 
rich, the country against the city, the farmer against 
the mechanic, one section against another section. 
But his opponents do it, and if they will take 
advantage of men's corruption, he must, or lose by 
his virtue. He gradually adopts two characters, a 
personal and a political character. All the requi- 
sitions of his conscience he obeys in his private 
character ; all the requisitions of his party, he obeys 
in his political conduct. In one character he is a 
man of principle ; in the other, a man of mere expe- 
dients. As a man he means to be veracious, honest, 
moral ; as a politician, he is deceitful, cunning, un- 
scrupulous, — anything for party. As a man, he 
abhors the slimy demagogue; as a politician, he 
employs him as a scavenger. As a man, he shrinks 
from the flagitiousness of slander; as a politician, 
he permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices in the 
success gained by it. As a man, he respects no one 
who is rotten in heart; as a politician, no man 
through whom victory may be gained can be too 
bad. As a citizen, he is an apostle of temperance ; 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 129 

as a politician, he puts his shoulder under the men 
who deluge their track with whisky, marching a 
crew of brawling patriots, pugnaciously drunk, to 
exercise the freeman's noblest franchise, — the vote. 
As a citizen, he is considerate of the young, and 
counsels them with admirable wisdom ; then, as a 
politician, he votes for tools, supporting for the mag- 
istracy worshipful aspirants scraped from the ditch, 
the grog-shop, and the brothel ; thus saying by deeds 
which the young are quick to understand : " I jested, 
when* I warned you of bad company ; for you per- 
ceive none worse than those whom I delight to 
honor. " For his religion he will give up all his 
secular interests; but for his politics he gives up 
even his religion. He adores virtue, and rewards 
vice. Whilst bolstering up unrighteous measures, 
and more unrighteous men, he prays for the ad- 
vancement of religion, and justice, and honor ! I 
would to God that his prayer might be answered 
upon his own political head ; for never was there a 
place where such blessings were more needed ! I 
am puzzled to know what will happen at death to 
this politic Christian, but most unchristian politician. 
Will both of his characters go heavenward together ? 
If the strongest prevails, he will certainly go to hell. 
If his weakest, (which is4iis Christian character,) 
is saved, what will become of his political char- 



130 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

acter? Shall he be sundered in two, as Solomon 
proposed to divide the contested infant? If this 
style of character were not flagitiously wicked, it 
would still be supremely ridiculous — but it is both. 
Let young men mark these amphibious exemplars 
to avoid their influence. The young have nothing 
to gain from those who are saints in religion and 
morals, and Machiavels in politics ; who have parti- 
tioned off their heart, invited Christ into one half, 
and Belial into the other. 

It is wisely said, that a strictly honest man who 
desires purely the public good, who will not crimi- 
nally flatter the people, nor take part in lies, or 
party-slander, nor descend to the arts of the rat, the 
weasel, and the fox, cannot succeed in politics. It 
is calmly said by thousands that one cannot be a 
politician and a Christian. Indeed, a man is liable 
to downright ridicule if he speaks in good earnest of 
a scrupulously honest and religiously moral politi- 
cian. I regard all such representations as false. We 
are not without men whose career is a refutation of 
the slander. It poisons the community to teach this 
fatal necessity of corruption in a course which so 
many must pursue. It is not strange, if such be 
the popular opinion, that young men include the 
sacrifice of strict integrity as a necessary element of 
a political life, and calmly agree to it, as to an inev- 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 131 

itable misfortune, rather than to a dark and volun- 
tary crime. 

Only if a man is an ignorant heathen, can he 
escape blame for such a decision ! A young man, at 
this day, in this land, who can coolly purpose a life 
of most unmanly guile, who means to earn his 
bread and fame by a sacrifice of integrity, is one 
who requires only temptation and opportunity to 
become a felon. What a heart has that man, who 
can stand in the very middle of the Bible, with its 
transcendent truths raising their glowing fronts on 
every side of him, and feel no inspiration but that 
of immorality and meanness ! He knows that for 
him have been founded the perpetual institutions of 
religion; for him prophets have 6poken, miracles 
been wrought, heaven robbed of its Magistrate, and 
the earth made sacred above all planets as the 
Redeemer's burial-place ;— he knows it all, and 
plunges from this height to the very bottom of cor- 
ruption ! He hears that he is immortal, and despises 
the immortality ; that he is a son of God, and scorns 
the dignity ; an heir of heaven, and infamously sells 
his heirship, and himself, for a contemptible mess of 
loathsome pottage ! Do not tell me of any excuses. 
It is a shame to attempt an excuse ! If there were 
no religion, if that vast sphere, out of which glow 
all the supereminent truths of the Bible, was a mere 



132 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

emptiness and void, yet, methinks, the very idea of 
Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the Laws 
and Liberties of a great people, would enkindle such 
a high and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings 
would be consumed ! But if the love of country, a 
sense of character, a manly regard for integrity, the 
example of our most illustrious men, the warnings 
of religion and all its solicitations, and the prospect 
of the future, — dark as Perdition to the bad, and 
light as Paradise to the good, — cannot inspire a 
young man to anything higher than a sneaking, 
truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent fame and 
dishonest bread, it is because such a creature has 
never felt one sensation of manly virtue ; — it is be- 
cause his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable 
to innocence. 

Thus have I sketched a few of the characters 
which abound in every community ; dangerous, not 
more by their direct temptations, than by their insen- 
sible influence. The sight of their deeds, of their 
temporary success, their apparent happiness, relaxes 
the tense rigidity of a scrupulous honesty, inspires 
a ruinous liberality of sentiment toward vice, and 
breeds the thoughts of evil; and evil thoughts 
are the cockatrice's eggs, hatching into all bad 
deeds. 

Remember, if by any of these you are enticed to 



PORTRAIT GALLERY. 133 

ruin, you will have to bear it alone ! They are 
strong to seduce, but heartless to sustain their vic- 
tims. They will exhaust your means, teach you to 
despise the God of your fathers, lead you into every 
sin, go with you while you afford them any plea- 
sure or profit, and then, when the inevitable disaster 
of wickedness begins to overwhelm you, they will 
abandon whom they have debauched. When, at 
length, death gnaws at your bones and knocks at 
your heart; when staggering, and worn out, your 
courage wasted, your hope gone, your purity, and 
long, long ago your peace — will he who first enticed 
your steps, now serve your extremity with one 
office of kindness? Will he stay your head? — cheer 
your dying agony with one word of hope? — or light 
the way for your coward steps to the grave?— or 
weep when you are gone ?— or send one pitiful scrap 
to your desolate family? What reveller wears 
crape for a dead drunkard? — what gang of gam- 
blers ever intermitted a game for the death of a 
companion? — or went on kind missions of relief to 
broken-down fellow-gamblers ? What harlot weeps 
for a harlot ? — what debauchee mourns for a debau- 
chee? They would carouse at your funeral, and 
gamble on your coffin. If one flush more of plea- 
sure were to be had by it, they would drink shame 
and ridicule to your memory out of your own skull, 
12 



134 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 

and roar in bacchanal-revelry over your damnation I 
All the shameless atrocities of wicked men are no- 
thing to their heartlessness toward each other when 
broken-down. As I have seen worms writhing on 
a carcass, overcrawling each other, and elevating 
their fiery heads in petty ferocity against each 
other, while all were enshrined in the corruption of 
a common carrion, — I have thought, ah ! shameful 
picture of wicked men tempting each other, abetting 
each other, until calamity overtook them, and then 
fighting and devouring or abandoning each other, 
without pity, or sorrow, or compassion, or remorse. 
Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, 
lead you on until you are useless ; then, if the vir- 
tuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you 
are ivithout a friend in the universe. 

My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not 
If they say, Come with us, . . . we shall find all 
precious substance, ive shall fill our houses with spoil : 
cast in thy lot among us ; let us all have one purse : 
my son, walk not thou in the way with them ; refrain 
thy feet from their path : for their feet run to evil, 
and make haste to shed blood, . . . and they lay in 
wait for their own blood, they lurk privily for their 
own lives. 



LECTURE V. 



Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and 
made four parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now the 
coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said 
therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, 
whose it shall be. These things therefore the soldiers did. 

I have condensed into one account the separate 
parts of this gambling transaction as narrated by 
each evangelist. How marked in every age is a 
Gambler's character ! The enraged priesthood of 
ferocious sects taunted Christ's dying agonies ; the 
bewildered multitude, accustomed to cruelty, could 
shout ; but no earthly creature, but a Gambler, could 
be so lost to all feeling as to sit down coolly under a 
dying man to wrangle for his garments, and arbi- 
trate their avaricious differences by casting dice for 
his tunic, with hands spotted with his spattered 
blood, warm and yet undried upon them. The de- 
scendants of these patriarchs of gambling, however, 
have taught us that there is nothing possible to hell, 
uncongenial to these, its elect saints. In this lecture 



136 GAMBLERS 

it is my disagreeable task to lead your steps down 
the dark path to their cruel haunts, there to exhibit 
their infernal passions, their awful ruin, and their 
ghastly memorials. In this house of darkness, amid 
fierce faces gleaming with the fire of fiercer hearts, 
amid oaths and groans and fiendish orgies, ending 
in murders and strewn with sweltering corpses, — do 
not mistake, and suppose yourself in Hell, — you are 
only in its precincts and vestibule. 



Gambling is the staking or winning of property 
upon mere hazard. The husbandman renders pro- 
duce for his gains; the mechanic renders the pro- 
duct of labor and skill for his gains; the gambler 
renders for his gain the sleights of useless skill, or 
more often, downright cheating. Betting is gam- 
bling; there is no honest equivalent to its gains. 
Dealings in fancy-stocks are oftentimes sheer gam- 
bling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned are 
no better than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard 
When skill returns for its earnings a useful service, 
as knowledge, beneficial amusements, or profitable 
labor, it is honest commerce. The skill of a pilot in 
threading a narrow channel, the skill of a lawyer in 



AND GAMBLING. 137 

threading a still more intricate one, are as substan- 
tial equivalents for a price received, as if they were 
merchant goods or agricultural products. But all 
gains of mere skill which result in no real benefit, 
are gambling gains. 

Gaming, as it springs from a principle of our na- 
ture, has, in some form, probably existed in every 
age. We trace it in remote periods and among the 
most barbarous people. It loses none of its fasci- 
nations among a civilized people. On the contrary, 
the habit of fierce stimulants, the jaded appetite of 
luxury, and the satiety of wealth, seem to invite 
the master-excitant. Our land, not apt to be behind 
in good ar evil, is full of gambling in all its forms — 
the gambling of commerce, the gambling of bets and 
wagers, and the gambling of games of hazard. 
There is gambling in refined circles, and in the low- 
est; among the members of our national govern- 
ment, and of our state-governments. Thief gambles 
with thief, in jail ; the judge who sent them there, 
the lawyer who prosecuted, and the lawyer who 
defended them, often gamble too. This vice, once 
almost universally prevalent among the Western 
bar, and still too frequently disgracing its members, 
is, however, we are happy to believe, decreasing. 
In many circuits, not long ago, and in some now, 
the judge, the jury, and the bar, shuffled cards by 
12* 



138 GAMBLERS 

night, and law by day — dealing out money and jus- 
tice alike. The clatter of dice and cards disturbs 
your slumber on the boat, and rings drowsily from 
the upper rooms of the hotel. This vice pervades 
the city, extends over every line of travel, and 
infests the most moral districts. The secreted lamp 
dimly lights the apprentices to their game ; with un- 
suspected disobedience, boys creep out of their beds 
to it ; it goes on in the store close by the till ; it haunts 
the shop. The scoundrel in his lair, the scholar in. 
his room ; the pirate on his ship, gay women at par- 
ties ; loafers in the street-corner, public functiona- 
ries in their offices; the beggar under the hedge, 
the rascal in prison, and some professors of religion 
in the somnolent hours of the Sabbath, — waste their 
energies by the ruinous excitement of the game. 
Besides these players, there are troops of professional 
gamblers, troops of hangers-on, troops of youth to 
be drawn in. An inexperienced eye would detect 
in our peaceful towns no signs of this vulture-flock ; 
—so in a sunny day, when all cheerful birds are 
singing merrily, not a buzzard can be seen ; but let 
a carcass drop, and they will push forth their gaunt 
heads from their gloomy roosts, and come flapping 
from the dark woods to speck the air, and dot the 
ground with their numbers. 

The universal prevalence of this vice is a reason 



AND GAMBLING. 139 

for parental vigilance ; and a reason of remonstrance 
from the citizen, the parent, the minister of the gos- 
pel, the patriot, and the press. I propose to trace its | 
opening, describe its subjects, and detail its effects, j 
A young man, proud of freedom, anxious to exert 
his manhood, has tumbled his Bible, and sober books, 
and letters of counsel, into a dark closet. He has 
learned various accomplishments, to flirt, to boast, 
to swear, to fight, to drink. He has let every one 
of these chains be put around him, upon the solemn 
promise of Satan that he would take them off when- 
ever he wished. Hearing of the artistic feats of 
eminent gamblers, he emulates them. So, he pon- 
ders the game. He teaches what he has learned to 
his shopmates, and feels himself their master. As 
yet he has never played for stakes. It begins thus : 
Peeping into a book-store, he watches till the sober 
customers go out ; then slips in, and with assumed 
boldness, not concealing his shame, he asks for 
cards, buys them, and hastens out. The first game 
is to pay for the cards. After the relish of playing 
for a stake, no game can satisfy them without a 
stake. A few nuts are staked ; then a bottle of wine ; 
an oyster-supper. At last they can venture a six- 
pence in actual money — just for the amusement of it. 
I need go no further — whoever wishes to do any- 
thing with the lad, can do it now. If properly plied, 



140 "GAMBLERS 

and gradually led, he will go to any length, and stop 
only at the gallows. Do you doubt it? let us trace 
him a year or two further on. 

With his father's blessing, and his mother's tears ; 
the young man departs from home. He has received 
his patrimony, and embarks for life and indepen- 
dence. Upon his journey he rests at a city ; visits 
the " school of morals;" lingers in more suspicious 
places ; is seen by a sharper ; and makes his acquain- 
tance. The knave sits by him at dinner ; gives him 
the news of the place, and a world of advice ; 
cautions him against sharpers; inquires if he has 
money, and charges him to keep it secret; offers 
himself to make with him the rounds of the town, 
and secure him from imposition. At length, that he 
may see all, he is taken to a gaming-house, but, 
with apparent kindness, warned not to play. He 
stands by to see the various fortunes of the game ; 
some, forever losing; some, touch what number 
they will, gaining piles of gold. Looking in thirst 
where wine is free. A glass is taken ; another of a 
better kind ; next the best the landlord has, and two 
glasses of that. A change comes over the youth; 
his exhilaration raises his courage, and lulls his 
caution. Gambling seen, seems a different thing 
from gambling painted by a pious father ! Just then 
his friend remarks that one might easily double his 



AND GAMBLING. 141 

money by a few ventures, but that it was, perhaps, 
prudent not to risk. Only this was needed to fire 
his mind. What! only prudence between me and 
gain? Then that shall not be long! He stakes; 
he wins. Stakes again ; wins again. Glorious ! I 
am the lucky man that is to break the bank ! He 
stakes, and wins again. His pulse races; his face 
burns; his blood is up, and fear gone. He loses; 
loses again ; loses all his winnings ; loses more. But 
fortune turns again; he wins anew. He has now 
lost all self-command. Gains excite him, and losses 
excite him more. He doubles his stakes; then 
trebles them — and all is swept. He rushes on, puts 
up his whole purse, and loses the whole ! Then he 
would borrow ; no man will lend. He is desperate, 
he will fight at a word. He is led to the street, and 
thrust out. The cool breeze which blows upon his 
fevered cheek, wafts the slow and solemn stroke 
of the clock, — one, — two, — three, — four ; four of the 
morning ! Quick work of ruin ! — an innocent man 
destroyed in a night ! He staggers to his hotel, 
remembers as he enters it, that he has not even 
enough to pay his bill. It now flashes upon him 
that his friend, who never had left him for an hour 
before, had stayed behind where his money is, and, 
doubtless, is laughing over his spoils. His blood 
boils with rage. But at length comes up the remem- 



142 GAMBLERS 

brance of home; a parent's training and counsels 
for more than twenty years, destroyed in a night ! 
" Good God ! what a wretch I have been ! I am 
not fit to live. I cannot go home. I am a stranger 
here. Oh ! that I were dead ! Oh ! that I had died 
before I knew this guilt, and were lying where my 
sister lies ! Oh God ! Oh God ! my head will burst 
with agony ! " He stalks his lonely room with 
an agony which only the young heart knows in 
its first horrible awakening to remorse — when it C 
looks despair full in the face, and feels its hideous ( . 
incantations tempting him to suicide. Subdued atf 
length by agony, cowed and weakened by distress, f 
he is sought again by those who plucked himi 
Cunning to subvert inexperience, to raise the evij 
passions, and to allay the good, they make him thei* 
pliant tool. 

Farewell, young man ! I see thy steps turned 
that haunt again ! I see hope lighting thy face ; bift 
it is a lurid light, and never came from heavei* 
Stop before that threshold ! — tarn, and bid farewii 
to home ! — farewell to innocence ! — farewell to v$< 
erable father and aged mother ! — the next step si 
part thee from them all forever. And now he 
forth be a mate to thieves, a brother to corruptSri. 
Thou hast made a league with death, and xgto 
death shalt thou go. 



I 



AND GAMBLING. 143 

Let us here pause, to draw the likeness of a few 
who stand conspicuous in that vulgar crowd of gam- 
blers, with which hereafter he will consort. The 
first is a taciturn, quiet man. No one knows when 
he comes into town, or when he leaves. No man 
hears of his gaining ; for he never boasts, nor reports 
his luck. He spends little for parade; his money 
seems to go and come only through the game. He 
reads none, converses none, is neither a glutton nor 
a hard drinker ; he sports few ornaments, and wears 
plain clothing. Upon the whole, he seems a gentle- 
manly man ; and sober citizens say, " his only fault 
is gambling." What then is this "only fault?" In 
his heart he has the most intense and consuming 
lust of play. He is quiet because every passion is 
absorbed in one ; and that one burning at the highest 
; ame. He thinks of nothing else, cares only for 
his. All other things, even the hottest lusts of other 
[ien, are too cool to be temptations to him ; so much 
eeper is the style of his passions. He will sit upon 
is chair, and no man shall see him move for hours, 
xcept to play his cards. He sees none come in ? 
•one go out. Death might groan on one side of 
tl e room, and marriage might sport on the other, 
-he would know neither. Every created infiu- 
i. ee is shut out; one thing only moves him — the 
jr me; and that leaves not one pulse of excita- 



1 44 GAMBLERS 

bility unaroused, but stirs his soul to the very 
dregs. 

Very different is the roistering gamester. He 
bears a jolly face, a glistening eye something watery 
through watching and drink. His fingers are man- 
acled in rings ; his bosom glows with pearls and 
diamonds. He learns the time which he wastes 
from a watch full gorgeously carved, (and not with 
the most modest scenes,) and slung around his neck 
by a ponderous golden chain. There is not so splen- 
did a fellow to be seen sweeping through the streets. 
The landlord makes him welcome — he will bear a 
full bill. The tailor smiles like May — he will buy 
half his shop. Other places bid him welcome — he 
will bear large stealings. 

Like the Judge, he makes his circuit, but not for 
justice ; like the Preacher, he has his appointments, 
but not for instruction. His circuits are the race- 
courses, the crowded capital, days of general convo- 
cation, conventions, and mass-gatherings. He will 
flame on the race-track, bet his thousands, and beat 
the ring at swearing, oaths vernacular, imported, 
simple, or compound. The drinking-booth smokes 
when he draws in his welcome suit. Did you see 
him only by day, flaming in apparel, jovial and free- 
hearted at the Restaurateur or Hotel, you would 
think him a Prince let loose — a cross between Prince 
Hal and Falstaff. 



AND GAMBLING. 145 

But night is his day. These are mere exercises, 
and brief prefaces to his real accomplishments. He 
is a good fellow, who dares play deeper ; he is wild 
indeed, who seems wilder ; and he is keen indeed, 
who is sharper than he is, after all this show of 
frankness. No one is quicker, slyer, and more alert 
at a game. He can shuffle the pack till an honest 
man would as soon think of looking for a particu- 
lar drop of water in the ocean, as for a particular 
card in any particular place. Perhaps he is igno- 
rant which is at the top and which at the bottom ! 
At any rate, watch him closely, or you will get a 
lean hand and he a fat one. A plain man would 
think him a wizard or the devil. When he touches 
a pack they seem alive, and acting to his will rather 
than his touch. He deals them like lightning, they 
rain like snow-flakes, sometimes one, sometimes 
two, if need be four or five together, and his hand 
hardly moved. If he loses, very well, he laughs ; 
if he gains, he only laughs a little more. Full of 
stories, full of songs, full of wit, full of roistering 
spirit — yet do not trespass too much upon his good 
nature with insult ! All this outside is only the 
spotted hide which covers the tiger. He who pro- 
vokes this man, shall see what lightning can break 
out of a summer-seeming cloud ! 

These do not fairly represent the race of gam- 
13 



146 GAMBLERS 

biers, — conveying too favorable an impression. 
There is one, often met on Steam-boats, travelling 
solely to gamble. He has the servants, or steward, 
or some partner, in league with him, to fleece every 
unwary player whom he inveigles to a game. He 
deals falsely ; heats his dupe to madness by drink, 
drinking none himself; watches the signal of his 
accomplice telegraphing his opponent's hand ; at a 
stray look, he will slip your money off and steal it. 
To cover false playing, or to get rid of paying losses, 
he will lie fiercely, and swear uproariously, and 
break up the play to fight with knife or pistol — 
first scraping the table of every penny. When the 
passengers are asleep, he surveys the luggage, to see 
what may be worth stealing ; he pulls a watch from 
under the pillow of. one sleeper ; fumbles in the 
pockets of another; and gathers booty throughout 
the cabin. Leaving the boat before morning, he 
appears at some village hotel, a magnificent gentle- 
man, a polished traveller, or even a distinguished 
nobleman ! 

There is another gambler, cowardly, sleek, steal- 
thy, humble, mousing, and mean — a simple blood- 
sucker. For money, he will be a tool to other 
gamblers; steal for them, and from them; he plays 
the jackal, and searches victims for them, humbly 
satisfied to pick the bones afterward. Thus, (to em- 



AND GAMBLING. 147 

ploy his own language,) he ropes in the inexperi- 
enced young, flatters them, teaches them, inflames 
their passions, purveys to their appetites, cheats 
them, debauches them, draws them down to his own 
level, and then lords it over them in malignant 
meanness. Himself impure, he plunges others into 
lasciviousness ; and with a train of reeking satellites, 
he revolves a few years in the orbit of the game, the 
brothel, and the doctor's shop; then sinks and dies: 
the world is purer, and good men thank God that he 
is gone. 

Besides these, time would fail me to describe the 
ineffable dignity of a gambling judge; the cautious, 
phlegmatic lawyer, gambling from sheer avarice ; 
the broken-down and cast-away politician, seeking 
in the game the needed excitement, and a fair field 
for all the base tricks he once played off as a pa- 
triot: the pert, sharp, keen, jockey-gambler; the 
soaked, obese, plethoric, wheezing, bacchanal ; and 
a crowd of ignoble worthies, wearing all the badges 
and titles of vice, throughout its base peerage. 

A detail of the evils of gambling should be pre- 
ceded by an illustration of that constitution of mind 
out of which they mainly spring — I mean its exci- 
tability. The body is not stored with a fixed 
amount of strength, nor the mind with a uniform 
measure of excitement; but both are capable, by 



148 GAMBLERS 

stimulation, of expansion of strength or feeling, 
almost without limit. Experience shows, that within 
certain bounds, excitement is healthful and neces- 
sary, but beyond this limit, exhausting and destruc- 
tive. Men are allowed to choose between moderate 
but long-continued excitement, and intense but short- 
lived excitement. Too generally they prefer the 
latter. To gain this intense thrill, a thousand meth- 
ods are tried. The inebriate obtains it by drink 
and drugs ; the politician, by the keen interest of the 
civil campaign; the young by amusements which 
violently inflame and gratify their appetites. When 
once this higher flavor of stimulus has been tasted, 
all that is less becomes vapid and disgustful. A 
sailor tries to live on shore ; a few weeks suffice. To 
be sure, there is no hardship, or cold, or suffering; 
but neither is there the strong excitement of the 
ocean, the gale, the storm, and the world of strange 
sights. The politician perceives that his private 
affairs are deranged, his family neglected, his char- 
acter aspersed, his feelings exacerbated. When men 
hear him confess that his career is a hideous waking 
dream, the race vexatious, and the end vanity, they 
wonder that he clings to it ; but he knows that no- 
thing but the fiery wine which he has tasted will rouse 
up that intense excitement, now become necessary 
to his happiness. For this reason, great men often 



AND GAMBLING. 149 

cling to public office with all its envy, jealousy, 
care, toil, hates, competitions, and unrequited fidel- 
ity; for these very disgusts, and the perpetual strug- 
gle, strike a deeper chord of excitement than is pos- 
sible to the gentler touches of home, friendship and 
love. Here too is the key to the real evil of promis- 
cuous novel-reading, to the habit of reverie and 
mental romancing. None of life's common duties 
can excite to such wild pleasure as these ; and they 
must be continued, or the mind reacts into the leth- 
argy of fatigue and ennui. It is upon this principle 
that men love pain; suffering is painful to a specta- 
tor ; but in tragedies, at public executions, at pugil- 
istic combats, at cock-fightings, horse-races, bear- 
baitings, bull-fights, gladiatorial shows, it excites a 
jaded mind as nothing else can. A tyrant torments 
for the same reason that a girl reads her tear-bedewed 
romance, or an inebriate drinks his dram. No 
longer susceptible even to inordinate stimuli, actual 
moans, and shrieks, and the writhing of utter agony, 
just suffice to excite his worn-out sense, and inspire, 
probably, less emotion than ordinary men have in 
listening to a tragedy or reading a bloody novel. 

Gambling is founded upon the very worst perver- 
sion of this powerful element of our nature. It heats 
every part of the mind like an oven. The faculties 
which produce calculation, pride of skill, of superi- 
13* 



150 GAMBLERS 

ority, love of gain, hope, fear, jealousy, hatred, are 
absorbed in the game, and exhilarated, or exacerba- 
ted by victory or defeat. These passions are, doubt- 
less, excited in men by the daily occurrences of life ; 
but then they are transient, and counteracted by a 
thousand grades of emotion, which rise and fall like 
\ the undulations of the sea. But in gambling there 
is no intermission, no counteraction. The whole 
mind is excited to the utmost, and concentrated at 
its extreme point of excitation for hours and days, 
with the additional waste of sleepless nights, pro- 
fuse drinking, and other congenial immoralities. 
Every other pursuit becomes tasteless ; for no ordi- 
nary duty has in it a stimulus which can scorch a 
mind which now refuses to burn without blazing, or 
to feel an interest which is not intoxication. The 
victim of excitement is like a mariner who ventures 
into the edge of a whirlpool for a motion more exhil- 
arating than plain sailing. He is unalarmed during 
the first few gyrations, for escape is easy. But each 
turn sweeps him further in; the power augments, 
the speed becomes terrific as he rushes toward the 
vortex ; all escape now hopeless. A noble ship went 
in ; it is spit out in broken fragments, splintered 
spars, crushed masts, and cast up for many a rood 
along the shore. The specific evils of gambling 
may now be almost imagined. 



AND GAMBLING. 151 

I. It diseases the mind, unfitting it for the duties 
of life. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in 
any useful vocation. A gambling mechanic finds 
his labor less relishful as his passion for play in- 
creases. He grows unsteady, neglects his work, 
becomes unfaithful to promises; what he performs* 
he slights. Little jobs seem little enough ; he desires 
immense contracts, whose uncertainty has much the 
excitement of gambling — and for the best of reasons ; 
and in the pursuit of great and sudden profits, by 
wild schemes, he stumbles over into ruin, leaving all 
who employed or trusted him in the rubbish of his 
speculations. 

A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of 
his profession, will court its exciting duties. To 
explore authorities, compare reasons, digest, and 
write, — this is tiresome. But to advocate, to engage 
in fiery contests with keen opponents, this is nearly 
as good as gambling. Many a ruined client has 
cursed the law, and cursed a stupid jury, and cursed 
everybody for his irretrievable loss, except his law- 
yer, who gambled all night when he should have 
prepared the case, and came half asleep and de- 
bauched into court in the morning to lose a good 
case mismanaged, and snatched from his gambling 
hands by the art of sober opponents. 

A gambling student, if such a thing can be, with- 



152 GAMBLERS 

draws from thoughtful authors to the brilliant and 
spicy; from the pure among these, to the sharp and 
ribald ; from all reading about depraved life, to see- 
ing ; from sight to experience. Gambling vitiates 
the imagination, corrupts the tastes, destroys the 
industry — for no man will drudge for cents, who 
gambles for dollars by the hundred; or practise a 
piddling economy, while, with almost equal indiffer- 
ence, he makes or loses five hundred in a night. 

II. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic 
habits and affections. Home is a prison to an invet- 
erate gambler; there is no air there that he can 
breathe. For a moment he may sport with his 
children, and smile upon his wife ; but his heart, its 
strong passions, are not there. A little branch-rill 
may flow through the family, but the deep river of 
his affections flows away from home. On the Issue 
of a game, Tacitus narrates that the ancient Ger- 
mans would stake their property, their wives, their 
children, and themselves. What less than this is it, 
when a man will stake that property which is to 
give his family bread, and that honor which gives 
them place and rank in society ? 

When playing becomes desperate gambling, the 
heart is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings 
have smouldered to ashes; and a thorough-paced 
gamester could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and 



AND GAMBLING. 153 

wrangle for his stakes amid murder, and pocket gold 
dripping with the blood of his own kindred. 

III. Gambling is the parent and companion of 
every vice which pollutes the heart, or injures 
society. 

It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, 
and so excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful 
to industrious and thriving men, that those who 
practise it are shut up to themselves ; unlike lawful 
pursuits, it is not modified or restrained by collision 
with others. Gamblers herd with gamblers. They 
tempt and provoke each other to all evil, without 
affording one restraint, and without providing the 
counterbalance of a single virtuous impulse. They 
are like snakes coiling among snakes, poison and 
poisoning ; like plague-patients, infected and diffus- 
ing infection: each sick, and all contagious. It is 
impossible to put bad men together and not have 
them grow worse. The herding of convicts promis- 
cuously, produced such a fermentation of depravity, 
that, long ago, legislators forbade it. When criminals, 
out of jail, herd together by choice, the same corrupt 
nature will doom them to growing loathsomeness, 
because to increasing wickedness. 

IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The bottle is 
almost as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. 
Some are seduced to drink; some drink for imita- 



154 GAMBLERS 

tion, at first, and fashion. When super-excitements, 
at intervals, subside, their victim cannot bear the 
deathlike gloom of the reaction; and, by drugs or 
liquor, wind up their system to the glowing point 
again. Therefore, drinking is the invariable con- 
comitant of the theatre, circus, race-course, gaming- 
table, and of all amusements which powerfully 
excite all but the moral feelings. When the double 
fires of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will 
soon be consumed. If men are found who do not 
drink, they are the more noticeable because excep- 
tions. 

V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inev- 
itable cause of dishonesty. Robbers have robbers' 
honor; thieves have thieves' law; and pirates con- 
form to pirates' regulations. But where is there a 
gambler's code ? One law there is, and this not 
universal, pay your gambling debts. But on the 
wide question, how is it fair to win — what law is 
there ? What will shut a man out from a gambler's 
club ? May he not discover his opponent's hand by 
fraud ? May not a concealed thread, pulling the 
significant one ; — one, two ; or one, two, three ; or 
the sign of a bribed servant or waiter, inform him, 
and yet his standing be fair ? May he not cheat in 
shuffling, and yet be in full orders and canonical? 
May he not cheat in dealing, and yet be a welcome 



AND GAMBLING. 155 

gambler? — may he not steal the money from youi 
pile by laying his hands upon it, just as any other 
thief would, and yet be an approved gambler? 
May not the whole code be stated thus : Pay 
what you lose, get what you can, and in any way 
you can ! I am told, perhaps, that there are honest 
gamblers, gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly; there 
are always ripe apples before there are rotten. Men 
always begin before they end ; there is always an 
approximation before there is contact. Players will 
play truly till they get used to playing untruly; 
will be honest, till they cheat ; will be honorable, 
till they become base ; and when you have said all 
this, what does it amount to but this, that men who 
really gamble, really cheat; and that they only do 
not cheat, who are not yet real gamblers? If this 
mends the matter, let it be so amended. I have 
spoken of gamesters only among themselves ; this is 
the least part of the evil; for who is concerned 
when lions destroy bears, or wolves devour wolf- 
cubs, or snakes sting vipers? In respect to that 
department of gambling which includes the roping-in 
of strangers, young men, collecting-clerks, and un- 
suspecting green-hands, and robbing them, I have 
no language strong enough to mark down its turpi- 
tude, its infernal rapacity. After hearing many of 
the scenes not unfamiliar to every gambler, I think 



156 GAMBLERS 

Satan might be proud of their dealings, and look up 
to them with that deferential respect, with which 
one monster gazes upon a superior. There is not 
even the expectation of honesty. Some scullion- 
herald of iniquity decoys the unwary wretch into 
the secret room; he is tempted to drink; made 
confident by the specious simplicity of the game ; 
allowed to win ; and every bait and lure and blind 
is employed — then he is plucked to the skin by tricks 
which appear as fair as honesty itself. The robber 
avows his deed, does it openly ; the gambler sneaks 
to the same result under skulking pretences. There 
is a frank way, and a mean way of doing a wicked 
thing. The gambler takes the meanest way of 
doing the dirtiest deed. The victim's own partner 
is sucking his blood; it is a league of sharpers, to 
get his money at any rate ; and the wickedness is so 
unblushing and unmitigated, that it gives, at last, an 
instance of what the deceitful human heart, knavish 
as it is, is ashamed to try to cover or conceal ; but 
confesses with helpless honesty, that it is fraud, 
cheating, stealing, robbery, — and nothing else. 

If I walk the dark street^ and a perishing, hungry 
wretch meets me and bears off my purse with but a 
single dollar, the whole town awakes; the officers 
are alert, the myrmidons of the law scout, and hunt, 
and bring in the trembling culprit to stow him 



AND GAMBLING. 157 

in the jail. But a worse thief may meet me, decoy 
my steps, and by a greater dishonesty, filch ten 
thousand dollars,— and what then? The story 
spreads, the sharpers move abroad unharmed, no 
one stirs. It is the day's conversation ; and like a 
j sound it rolls to the distance, and dies in an echo. 
Shall such astounding iniquities be vomited out 
amidst us, and no man care? Do we love our chil- 
dren, and yet let them walk in a den of vipers ? 
Shall we pretend to virtue, and purity, and religion, 
| and yet make partners of our social life, men whose 
I heart has conceived such damnable deeds, and whose 
hands have performed them? Shall there be even 
J in the eye of religion no difference between the cor- 
jruptor of youth and their guardian? Are all the 
lines and marks of morality so effaced, is the nerve 
and courage of virtue so quailed by the frequency 
and boldness of flagitious crimes, that men, covered 
'over with wickedness, shall find their iniquity no 
(obstacle to their advancement among a Christian 
(people? 

In almost every form of iniquity there is some 
shade or trace of good. We have in gambling a 
I crime standing alone— dark, malignant, uncom- 
pounded wickedness ! It seems in its full growth a 
jmonster without a tender mercy, devouring its own 
'Offspring without one feeling but appetite. A game- ' 
14 



158 GAMBLERS 

ster, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit 
of concentrated avaricious selfishness. His intellect 
is a living thing, quickened with double life for vil- 
lany ; his heart is steel of fourfold temper. When 
a man begins to gamble he is as a noble tree full of 
sap, green with leaves, a shade to beasts, and a 
covert to birds. When one becomes a thorough gam- 
bler, he is like that tree lightning-smitten, rotten in 
root, dry in branch, and sapless ; seasoned hard 
and tough ; nothing lives beneath it, nothing on its 
branches, unless a hawk or a vulture perches for a 
moment to whet its beak, and fly screaming away 
for its prey. 

To every young man who indulges in the least 
form of gambling, I raise a warning voice ! Under 
the specious name of amusement, you are laying the 
foundation of gambling. Playing is the seed which 
comes up gambling. It is the light wind which 
brings up the storm. It is the white frost which pre- 
ludes the winter. You are mistaken, however, in 
supposing that it is harmless in its earliest beginnings. 
Its terrible blight belongs, doubtless, to a later stage ; 
but its consumption of time, its destruction of indus- 
try, its distaste for the calmer pleasures of life, be- 
long to the very beginning. You will begin to play 
with every generous feeling. Amusement will be 
the plea. At the beginning the game will excite en- 



AND GAMBLING. 159 

thusiasm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and the 
love of money. The love of money, at first almost 
imperceptible, at last will rule out all the rest, — like 
Aaron's rod,— a serpent, swallowing every other 
serpent. Generosity, enthusiasm, pride and skill, 
love of mastery, will be absorbed in one mighty feel- 
ing, — the savage lust of lucre. 

There is a downward climax in this sin. The 
opening and ending are fatally connected, and drawn 
toward each other with almost irresistible attrac- 
tion. If gambling is a vortex, playing is the 
outer ring of the Maelstrom. The thousand pound 
stake, the whole estate put up on a game — what are 
these but the instruments of kindling that tremen- 
dous excitement which a diseased heart craves? 
What is the amusement for which you play but the 
excitement of the game? And for what but this 
does the jaded gambler play? You differ from him 
only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not so- 
lace yourself that you shall escape because others 
have ; for they stopped, and you go on. Are you as 
safe as they, when you are in the gulf-stream of 
perdition, and they on the shore? But have you 
ever asked, how many have escaped ? Not one in a 
thousand is left unblighted ! You have nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine chances against you, and one 
for you ; and will you go on ? If a disease should 



160 GAMBLERS 

stalk through the town, devouring whole families, 
and sparing not one in five hundred, would you lie 
down under it quietly because you had one chance 
in five hundred ? Had a scorpion stung you, would 
it alleviate your pangs to reflect that you had only 
one chance in one hundred? Had you swallowed 
corrosive poison, would it ease your convulsions to 
think there was only one chance in fifty for you? I 
do not call every man who plays a gambler, but a 
gambler in embryo. Let me trace your course from 
the amusement of innocent playing to its almost 
inevitable end. 

Scene first. A genteel coffee-house, — whose hu- 
mane screen conceals a line of grenadier bottles, and 
hides respectable blushes from impertinent eyes. 
There is a quiet little room opening out of the bar ; 
and here sit four jovial youths. The cards are out, 
the wines are in. The fourth is a reluctant hand ; 
he does not love the drink, nor approve the game. 
He anticipates and fears the result of both. Why 
is he here? He is a whole-souled fellow, and is 
afraid to seem ashamed of any fashionable gaiety. 
He will sip his wine upon the importunity of a 
friend newly come to town, and is too polite to spoil 
that friend's pleasure by refusing a part in the game. 
They sit, shuffle, deal; the night wears on, the 
clock telling no tale of passing hours — the prudent 



AND GAMBLING. 161 

liquor-fiend has made it safely dumb. The night is 
getting old ; its dank air grows fresher ; the east is 
grey ; the gaming and drinking and hilarious laugh- 
ter are over, and the youths wending homeward. 
What says conscience? No matter what it says; 
they did not hear, and we will not. Whatever was 
said, it was very shortly answered thus: " This 
has not been gambling ; all were gentlemen ; there 
was no cheating ; simply a convivial evening ; no 
stakes except the bills incident to the entertainment. 
If anybody blames a young man for a little inno- 
cent exhilaration on a special occasion, he is a su- 
perstitious bigot ; let him croak ! " Such a garnished 
game is made the text to justify the whole round of 
gambling. Let us, then, look at 

Scene the second. In a room so silent that there 
is no sound except the shrill cock crowing the morn- 
ing, where the forgotten candles burn dimly over the 
long and lengthened wick, sit four men. Carved 
marble could not be more motionless, save their 
hands. Pale, watchful, though weary, their eyes 
pierce the cards, or furtively read each other's faces. 
Hours have passed over them thus. At length 
they rise without words ; some, with a satisfaction 
which only makes their faces brightly haggard, 
scrape off the piles of money; others, dark, sullen, 
silent, fierce, move away from their lost money. 
14* 



162 GAMBLERS 

The darkest and fiercest of the four is that young 
friend who first sat down to make out a game ! He 
will never sit so innocently again. What says he to 
this conscience now ? I have a right to gamble ; I 
; have a right to be damned too, if I choose ; . whose 
business is it?" 

Scene the third. Years have passed on. He has 
seen youth ruined, at first with expostulation, then 
with only silent regret, then consenting to take part 
of the spoils; and finally, he has himself decoyed, 
duped, and stripped them without mercy. Go with 
me into that dilapidated house, not far from the 
landing, at New Orleans. Look into that dirty 
room. Around a broken table, sitting upon boxes, 
kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew dealing 
cards smouched with tobacco, grease and liquor. 
One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with 
brandy ; a shock of grizzly, matted hair, half cover- 
ing his villain eyes, which glare out like a wild 
beast's from a thicket. Close by him wheezes a 
white-faced, dropsical wretch, vermin-covered, and 
stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard, and a burly ne- 
gro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete the group. 
They have spectators — drunken sailors, and oglh^g, 
thieving, drinking women, who should have died 
long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here 
hour draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laugh- 



AND GAMBLING. 163 

ter, sometimes with threat, and oath, and uproar. 
The last few stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each 
charges each with cheating, and high words ensue, 
and blows ; and the whole gang burst out the door, 
beating, biting, scratching, and rolling over and over 
in the dirt and dust. The worst, the fiercest, the 4 
drunkest, of the four, is our friend who began by I 
making tip the game 1 

Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day, stand 
with me, if you would be sick of humanity, and 
look over that multitude of men kindly gathered to 
see a murderer hung ! At last, a guarded cart drags 
on a thrice-guarded wretch. At the gallows' ladder 
his courage fails. His coward- feet refuse to ascend ; 
dragged up, he is supported by bustling officials ; his 
brain reels, his eye swims, while the meek minister 
utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. 4 The prayei 
is said, the noose is fixed, the signal is given ; a shud- 
der runs through the crowd as he swings free. After 
a moment, his convulsed limbs stretch down, and 
hang heavily and still ; and he who began to gam- 
ble to make up a game, and ended with stabbing an 
enraged victim whom he had fleeced, has here played 
his last game, — himself the stake ! 

I feel impelled, in closing, to call the attention of 
all sober citizens to some potent influences which are 
exerted in favor of gambling. 



164 GAMBLERS 

In our civil economy we have Legislators to de- 
vise and enact wholesome laws ; Lawyers to counsel 
and aid those who need the laws' relief; and Judges 
to determine and administer the laws. If Legis- 
lators, Lawyers, and Judges are gamblers, with 
what hope do we warn off the young from this 
deadly fascination, against such authoritative ex- 
amples of high public functionaries ? With what 
eminent fitness does that Judge press the bench, who 
in private commits the vices which officially he is 
set to condemn ! With what singular terrors does 
he frown on a convicted gambler with whom he 
played last night, and will play again to-night ! 
How wisely should the fine be light which the 
sprightly criminal will win and pay out of the 
Judge's owii pocket ! 

With the name of Judge is associated ideas of im- 
maculate purity, sober piety, and fearless, favorless 
justice. Let it then be counted a dark crime for a 
recreant official so far to forget his reverend place, 
and noble office, as to run the gantlet of filthy 
vices, and make the word Judge, to suggest an 
incontinent trifier, who smites with his mouth, and 
smirks with his eye ; who holds the rod to strike the 
criminal, and smites only the law to make a gap for 
criminals to pass through ! If God loves this land, 



AND GAMBLING. 165 

may he save it from truckling, drinking, swearing, 
gambling, vicious Judges ! * 

With such Judges I must associate corrupt Legis- 
lators, whose bawling patriotism leaks out in all 
the sinks of infamy at the Capital. These living 
exemplars of vice, pass still-born laws against vice. 
Are such men sent to the Capital only to prac- 
tise debauchery ? Laborious seedsmen — they gather 
every germ of evil ; and laborious sowers — at home 
they strew them far and wide! It is a burning 
shame, a high outrage, that public men, by corrupt- 
ing the young with the example of manifold vices, 
should pay back their constituents for their honors ! 

Our land has little to fear from abroad, and much 
from within. We can bear foreign aggression, scar- 
city, the revulsions of commerce, plagues, and pesti- 
lences ; but we cannot bear vicious Judges, corrupt 
Courts, gambling Legislators, and a vicious, corrupt, 
and gambling constituency. Let us not be deceived ! 
The decay of civil institutions begins at the core. 
The outside wears all the lovely hues of ripeness, 
when the inside is rotting. Decline does not begin 
in bold and startling acts ; but, as in autumnal 
leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over diseased 

* The general eminent integrity of the Bench is unquestionable — and no 
remarks in the text are to be construed as an oblique aspersion of the pro- 
fession. But the purer our Judges generally, the more shameless is it that 
some will not abandon either their vices or their office. 



166 GAMBLERS 

vitals, consumptive laws wear the hectic blush, a 
brilliant eye, and transparent skin. Could the public 
sentiment declare that personal morality is the first 
element of patriotism j that corrupt Legislators are 
the most pernicious of criminals; that the Judge 
who lets the villain off, is the villain's patron; that 
tolerance of crime is intolerance of virtue, — our 
nation might defy all enemies and live forever ! 

And now, my young friends, 1 beseech you to let 
alone this evil before it be meddled with. You are 
safe from vice when you avoid even its appearance ; 
and only then. The first steps to wickedness are 
imperceptible. We do not wonder at the inexpe- 
rience of Adam ; but it is wonderful that six thou- 
sand years' repetition of the same arts, and the same 
uniform disaster, should have taught men nothing ! 
that generation after generation should perish, and 
the wreck be no warning ! 

The mariner searches his chart for hidden rocks, 
stands off from perilous shoals, and steers wide of 
reefs on which hang shattered morsels of wrecked 
ships, and runs in upon dangerous shores with the 
ship manned, the wheel in hand, and the lead con- 
stantly sounding. But the mariner upon life's sea, 
carries no chart of other men's voyages, drives be- 
fore every wind that will speed him, draws upon 
horrid shores with slumbering crew, or heads in 



AND GAMBLING. 167 

upon roaring reefs as though he would not perish 
where thousands have perished before him. 

Hell is populated with the victims of " harmless 
amusements." Will man never learn that the way 
to hell is through the valley of deceit ? The power 
of Satan to hold his victims is nothing to that mas- 
tery of art by which he first gains them. When he 
approaches to charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, 
gleaming from a lurid cloud, but as an angel of light 
radiant with innocence. His words fall like dew 
upon the flower; as musical as the crystal-drop 
warbling from a fountain. Beguiled by his art, he 
leads you to the enchanted ground. Oh! how it 
glows with every refulgent hue of heaven ! Afar 
off he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime; its 
smoke of torment slowly rising, and rising forever ! 
and he himself cunningly warns you of its dread 
disaster, for the very purpose of blinding and draw- 
ing you thither. He leads you to captivity through 
all the bowers of lulling magic. He plants your 
foot on odorous flowers; he fans your cheek with 
balmy breath ; he overhangs your head with rosy 
clouds ; he fills your ear with distant, drowsy music, 
charming every sense to rest. Oh ye ! who have 
thought the way to hell was bleak and frozen as 
j Norway, parched and barren as Sahara, strewed 
J like Golgotha with bones and skulls, reeking with 



168 GAMBLERS 

stench like the vale of Gehenna, — witness your 
mistake ! The way to hell is gorgeous ! It is a 
highway, cast up ; no lion is there, no ominous bird 
to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wailing-pit, 
no lurid gleams of distant fires, or moaning sounds 
of hidden woe ! Paradise is imitated to build you 
a way to death ; the flowers of heaven are stolen 
and poisoned ; the sweet plant of knowledge is here ; 
the pure white flower of religion ; seeming virtue 
and the charming tints of innocence are scattered all 
along like native herbage. The enchanted victim 
travels on. Standing afar behind, and from a silver- 
trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down the wind 
a solemn warning : There is a way which seemeth 

RIGHT TO MAN, BUT THE END THEREOF IS DEATH. And 

again, with louder blast: The wise man fore- 

SEETH THE EVIL ; FOOLS PASS ON AND ARE PUNISHED. 

Startled for a moment, the victim pauses ; gazes 
round upon the flowery scene, and whispers, Is it not 
harmless? — "Harmless" responds a serpent from 
the grass ! — u Harmless " echo the sighing winds ! — 
Harmless" re-echo a hundred airy tongues ! If 
now a gale from heaven might only sweep the 
clouds away through which the victim gazes ; oh ! 
if God would break that potent power which chains 
the blasts of hell, and let the sulphur-stench roll up 
the vale, how would the vision change ! — the road 



AND GAMBLING. J 69 

become a track of dead men's bones !— the heavens 
a lowering storm !-the balmy breezes, distant mail- 
ings— and all those balsam-shrubs that lied to his 
senses, sweat drops of blood upon their poison- 
boughs ! 

Ye who are meddling with the edges of vice, ye 
are on this road !-and utterly duped by its enchant- 
ments ! Your eye has already lost its honest glance, 
your taste has lost its purity, your heart throbs with 
poison | The leprosy is all over you, its blotches 
and eruptions cover you. Your feet stand on slip- 
pery places, whence in due time they shall slide, if 
you refuse the warning which I raise. They shall 
I slide from heaven, never to be visited by a gambler : 
! slide down to that fiery abyss below you, out of 
which none ever come. Then, when the last card is 
cast, and the game over, and you lost ; then, when 
; the echo of your fall shall ring through hell,— in 
! malignant triumph, shall the Arch-Gambler, 'who 
cunningly played for your soul, have his prey ! Too 
fate you shall look back upon life as a mighty game, 
tfn which you were the stake, and Satan the winner ' 
15 



LECTURE VI. 



All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness : that the man 
of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 2 
Tim. iii. 16, 17. 

Surely one cannot declare the whole counsel of 
God, and leave out a subject which is interwoven 
with almost every chapter of the Bible. So invet- 
erate is the prejudice against introducing into the 
pulpit the subject -<etf Licentiousness, that Ministers 
of the Gospel, knowing the vice to be singularly 
dangerous and frequent, have yet by silence almost 
complete, or broken only by circuitous allusions, 
manifested their submission to the popular taste.* 
That Vice upon which it has pleased God to be 
more explicit and full than upon any other ; against 
which he uttered his voice upon Sinai, Thou shalt 
I 

* The liberality with which this Lecture was condemned before I had 

J written it, and the prompt criticisms afterwards, of those who did not 

hear it, have induced me to print it almost unaltered. Otherwise I should 

have changed many portions of it from forms of expression peculiar to the 

pulpit into those better suited to a book. 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 171 

not commit adultery; upon which the lawgiver, 
Moses, legislated with boldness ; which Judges con- 
demned ; upon which the venerable Prophets spake 
oft and again ; against which Christ with singular 
directness and plainness uttered the purity of reli- 
gion ; and upon which He inspired Paul to discourse 
to the Corinthians, and to almost every primitive 
church ; this subject, upon which the Bible does not 
so much speak, as thunder — not by a single bait, 
but peal after peal — we are solemnly warned not to 
introduce into the pulpit ! 

I am entirely aware of the delicacy of introducing 
this subject into the pulpit. 

One difficulty arises from the sensitiveness of un- 
affected purity. A mind, retaining all the dew and 
freshness of innocence, shrinks from the very idea 
of impurity, as if it were sin to have thought or 
heard of it, — as if even the shadow of the evil would 
leave some soil upon the unsullied whiteness of the 
virgin-mind. Shall we be angry with this ? or shall 
we rudely rebuke so amiable a feeling, because it 
regrets a necessary duty ? God forbid ! If there 
be, in the world, that whose generous faults should 
be rebuked only by the tenderness of a reproving 
smile, it is the mistake of inexperienced purity. 
| We would as soon pelt an angel, bewildered among 
j men and half smothered with earth's noxious va- 



172 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

pors, for his trembling apprehensions. To any such, 
who have half wished that I might not speak, I 
say: — Nor would I, did I not know that purity will 
suffer more by the silence of shame, than by the 
honest voice of truth. 

Another difficulty springs from the nature of the 
English language, which has hardly been framed 
in a school where it may wind and fit itself to all 
the phases of impurity. But were I speaking French 
— the dialect of refined sensualism and of licentious 
literature ; the language of a land where taste and 
learning and art wait upon the altars of impurity — 
then I might copiously speak of this evil, nor use 
one plain word. But I thank God, the honest Eng- 
lish tongue which I have learned, has never been so 
bred to this vile subservience of evil. We have 
plain words enough to say plain things, but the dig- 
nity and manliness of our language has never grown 
supple to twine around brilliant dissipation. It has 
too many plain words, vulgar words, vile words ; 
but it has few mirror-words, which cast a sidelong 
image of an idea ; it has few words which wear a 
meaning smile, a courtesan-glance significant of 
something unexpressed. When public vice necessi- 
tates public reprehension, it is, for these reasons, 
diffiult to redeem plainness from vulgarity. We 
must speak plainly and properly ; or else speak by 
innuendo — which is the devil's lan^uas^. 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 173 

Another difficulty lies in the confused echoes 
which vile men create in every community, when 
the pulpit disturbs them. Do I not know the arts 
of cunning men? Did not Demetrius, the Silver- 
smith (worthy to have lived in our day !) become 
most wonderfully pious, and run all over the city to 
rouse up the dormant zeal of Diana's worshippers, 
and gather a mob, to whom he preached that Diana 
must be cared for ; when, to his fellow-craftsmen, he 
told the truth : our craft is in danger ! Men will 
not quietly be exposed. They foresee the rising 

; of a virtuously retributive public sentiment, as the 
mariner sees the cloud of the storm rolling up the 
heavens ! They strive to forestall and resist it. 

I How loudly will a liquor-fiend protest against tem- 
perance lectures — sinful enough for redeeming vic- 

' tims from his paw ! How sensitive some men to a 
church bell ! they are high priests of revivals at a 
horse-race, a theatre, or a liquor-supper ; but a reli- 
gious revival pains their sober minds. Even thus, 

i the town will be made vocal wifh outcries against 

'sermons on licentiousness. Who cries out? — the 

I sober ? — the immaculate ? — the devout ? It is the 
voice of the son of midnight ; it is the shriek of the 
strange woman's victim ! and their sensitiveness is 

jnot of purity, but of fear ! Men protest against the 
indecency of the pulpit, because the pulpit makes 
15* 



174 ' THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

them feel their own indecency ; they would drive us 
from the investigation of vice, that they may keep 
the field open for their own occupancy. I expect 
such men's reproaches. I know the reasons of them. 
([ am not to be turned by them, not one hair's 
breadth, if they rise to double their present volume, 
until I have hunted home the wolf to his lair, and 
ripped off his brindled hide in his very^ den !) 

Another difficulty exists, in the criminal fastidi- 
ousness of the community upon this subject. This 
is the counterfeit of delicacy. It resembles it less 
than paste-jewels do the pure pearl. Where deli- 
cacy, the atmosphere of a pure heart, is lost, or 
never was had, a substitute is sought; and is 
.found in forms of delicacy, not in its feelings. It 
is a delicacy of exterior, of etiquette, of show, of 
rules ; not of thought, not of pure imagination, not 
of the crystal-current of the heart I Criminal fas- 
tidiousness is the Pharisee's sepulchre; clean, white, 
beautiful without, full of dead men's bones within ! 
— the Pharisee's platter, the Pharisee's cup — it is the 
very Pharisee himself; and like him of old, lays on 
burdens grievous to be borne. Delicacy is a spring 
which God has sunken in the rock, which the win- 
ter never freezes, the summer never heats; which 
sends its quiet waters with music down the flowery 
hill-side, and which is pure and transparent, because 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 175 

it has at the bottom no sediment. I would that 
every one of us had this well of life, gushing from 
our hearts — an everlasting and full stream ! 

False modesty always judges by the outside; it 
cares how you speak, more than what That which 
would outrage in plain words, may be implied fur- * 
tively, in the sallies of wit or fancy, and be admis- 
sible. Every day I see this giggling modesty, which 
blushes at language more than at its meaning ; 
which smiles upon base things, if they will appear 
in the garb of virtue ! That disease of mind to 
which I have frequently alluded in these lectures, 
which leads it to clothe vice beautifully and then 
admit it, has had a fatal effect also upon Literature; 
giving currency to filth, by coining it in the mint of 
beauty. It is under the influence of this disease of 
taste and heart, that we hear expressed such strange 
judgments upon English authors. Those who speak 
plainly what they mean, when they speak at all, 
' are called rude and vulgar; while those upon whose 
j exquisite sentences the dew of indelicacy rests like 
] so many brilliant pearls of the morning upon flow- 
i ers, are called our moral authors ! 

The most dangerous writers in the English lan- 
guage are those whose artful insinuations and mis- 
chievous polish reflect upon the mind the image of 
impurity, without presenting the impurity itself. A 



176 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

plain vulgarity in a writer is its own antidote. It 
is like a foe who attacks us openly, and give us op- 
portunity of defence. But impurity, secreted under 
beauty, is like a treacherous friend who strolls with 
us in a garden of sweets, and destroys us by the 
odor of poisonous flowers proffered to our senses. , 
Let the reprehensible grossness of Chaucer be com- 
pared with the perfumed, elaborate brilliancy of 
Moore's license. I would not willingly answer at 
the bar of God for the writings of either ; but of the 
two, I would rather bear the sin of Chaucer's plain- 
spoken words, which never suggest more than they 
say, than the sin of Moore's language, over which 
plays a witching hue and shade of licentiousness. I 
would rather put the downright, and often abomina- 
ble vulgarity of Swift into my child's hand, than 
the scoundrel-indirections of Sterne. They are both 
impure writers ; but not equally harmful. The one 
says what he means ; the other means what he dare 
not say. Swift is, in this respect, Belial in his own 
form; Sterne is Satan in the form of an angel of 
light : and many will receive the temptation of the 
Angel, who would scorn the proffer of the Demon. 
What an incredible state of morals, in the English 
church, that permitted two of her eminent clergy to 
be the most licentious writers of the age, and as im- 
pure as almost any of the English literature ! Even 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 177 

our most classic authors have chosen to elaborate, 
with exquisite art, scenes which cannot but have 
more effect upon the passions than upon the taste. 
Embosomed in the midst of Thomson's glowing 
Seasons, one finds descriptions unsurpassed by any 
part of Don Juan ; and as much more dangerous 
than it is, as a courtesan, countenanced by virtuous 
society, is more dangerous than when among her 
own associates. Indeed, an author who surprises 
you with refined indelicacies in moral and reputable 
writings, is worse than one, who, without disguise, 
and on purpose, serves up a whole banquet of indel- 
icacies. Many will admit poison-morsels well su- 
gared, who would revolt from an infernal feast of 
impurity. There is little danger that robbers will 
tempt the honest young to robbery. Some one first 
tempts him to falsehood ;^ next, to petty dishones- 
ties ; next, to pilfering ; then, to thieving ; and now, 
only, will the robber influence him, when others 
have handed him down to his region of crime. 
Those authors who soften evil, and show deformity 
with tints of beauty ; who arm their general purity 
with the occasional sting of impurity; — these are 
they who take the feet out of the straight path — the 
guiltiest path of seduction. He who feeds an in- 
flamed appetite with food spiced to fire, is less guilty 
than he who hid in the mind the leaven which 



178 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

wrought this appetite. The polished seducer is cer- 
tainly more dangerous than the vulgar debauchee — 
both in life and in literature. 

In this contrast are to be placed Shakespeare and 
Bulwer: Shakespeare is sometimes gross, but not 
often covertly impure. Bulwer is slily impure, but 
not often gross. I am speaking, however, only of 
Shakespeare's Plays, and not of his youthful fugi- 
tive pieces ; which, I am afraid, cannot have part in 
this exception. He began wrong, but grew better. 
At first, he wrote by the taste of his age ; but when 
a man, he wrote to his own taste : and though he is 
not without sin, yet, compared with his contempo- 
raries, he is not more illustrious for his genius than 
for his purity. Reprehension, to be effective, should 
be just. No man is prepared to excuse properly the 
occasional blemishes of this wonderful writer, who 
has not been shocked at the immeasurable licen- 
tiousness of the Dramatists of his cycle. One play 
of Ford, one act, one conversation, has more abomi- 
nations than the whole world of Shakespeare. Let 
those women, who ignorantly sneer at Shakespeare, 
remember that they are indebted to him for the no- 
blest conceptions of woman's character in our litera- 
ture — the more praiseworthy, because he found no 
models in current authors. The occasional touches 
of truth and womanly delicacy in the early Drama 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 179 

tists are no compensation for the wholesale coarse- 
ness and vulgarity of their female characters. In 
Shakespeare, woman appears in her true form — 
pure, disinterested, ardent, devoted ; capable of the 
noblest feelings and of the highest deeds. The lan- 
guage of many of Shakespeare's women would be 
shocking in our day ; but so would be the domestic 
manners of that age. The same actions may in one 
age be a sign of corruption, and be perfectly inno- 
cent in another. No one is shocked that in a pio- 
neer-cabin, one room serves for a parlor, a kitchen, 
and a bed-room, for the whole family, and for pro- 
miscuous guests. Should fastidiousness revolt at 
this, as vulgar,— the vulgarity must be accredited 
to the fastidiousness, and not to the custom. Yet, 
it would be inexcusable in a refined metropolis, and 
everywhere the moment it ceases to be necessary. 
But nothing in these remarks must apologize for lan- 
guage or deed, which indicates an impure heart. No 
age, no custom, may plead extenuation for essential 
lust; and no sound mind can refrain from commen- 
dation of the master-dramatist of the world, when 
he learns that in writing for a most licentious age, 
he rose above it so far as to become something like 
a model to it of a more virtuous way. Shakespeare 
left the dramatical literature immeasurably purer 
than it came to him. 



180 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

Bulwer has made the English novel-literature 
more vile than he found it. The one was a reform- 
er, the other an implacable corrupter. We respect 
and admire the one, (while we mark his faults,) be- 
cause he withstood his age; and we despise with 
utter loathing the other, whose specific gravity of 
wickedness sunk him below the level of his own 
age. With a moderate caution, Shakespeare may 
be safely put into the hands of the young. I regard 
the admission of Bulwer as a crime against the first 
principles of virtue. 

In all the cases which I have considered, you will 
remark a greater indulgence to that impurity which 
breaks out on the surface, than to that which lurks 
in the blood and destroys the constitution. It is the 
curse of our literature that it is traversed by so 
many rills of impurity. It is a vast champaign, 
waving with unexampled luxuriance of flower, and 
vine, and fruit; but the poisonous flower every- 
where mingles with the pure ; and the deadly clus- 
ter lays its cheek on the wholesome grape ; nay, in 
the same cluster grow both the harmless and the 
hurtful berry; so that the hand can hardly be 
stretched out to gather flower or fruit without com- 
ing back poisoned. It is both a shame and an amaz- 
ing wonder, that the literature of a Christian nation 
should reek with a filth which Pagan antiquity 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 18] 

could scarcely endure ; that the Ministers of Christ 
should have left floating in the pool of offensive writ- 
ings, much that would have brought blood to the 
cheek of a Roman priest, and have shamed an actor 
of the school of Aristophanes. Literature is, in turn, 
both the cause and effect of the spirit of the age. 
Its effect upon this age has been to create a lively 
relish for exquisitely artful licentiousness, and dis- 
gust only for vulgarity. A witty, brilliant, sugges- 
tive indecency is tolerated for the sake of its genius. 
An age which translates and floods the community 
with French novels, (inspired by Venus and Bac- 
chus,) which reprints in popular forms, Byron, and 
Bulwer, and Moore, and Fielding, proposes to revise 
Shakespeare and expurgate the Bible ! ! Men who, 
at home, allow Don Juan to lie within reach of 
every reader, will not allow a Minister of the gospel 
to expose the evil of such a literature ! To read 
authors whose lines drop with the very gall of death ; 
to vault in elegant dress as near the edge of inde- 
cency as is possible without treading over; to ex- 
press the utmost possible impurity so dexterously, 
that not a vulgar word is used, but rosy, glowing, 
suggestive language— this, with many, is refine- 
ment. But to expose the prevalent vice; to meet 
its glittering literature with the plain and manly 
language of truth; to say nothing except what 
16 



I 



182 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

one desires to say plainly — this, it seems, is vul- 
garity ! 

One of the first steps in any reformation must be, 
not alone nor first the correction of the grossness. 
but of the elegancies of impurity. Could our liter- 
ature, and men's conversation, be put under such 
authority that neither should express, by insinua- 
tion, what dared not be said openly, in a little time, 
men would not dare to say at all what it would be 
indecent to speak plainly. 

If there be here any disciples of Bulwer ready to 
disport in the very ocean of license, if its waters 
only seem translucent ; who can read and relish all 
that fires the heart, and are only then distressed and 
shocked when a serious man raises the rod to cor- 
rect and repress the evil ; if there be here any who 
can drain his goblet of mingled wine, and only shud- 
der at crystal- water ; any who can see this modern 
prophet of villany strike the rock of corruption, to 
water his motley herd of revellers, but hate him 
who out of the Rock of Truth should bid gush the 
healthful stream ; — I beseech them to bow their heads 
in this Christian assembly, and weep their tears of 
regret in secret places, until the evening service be 
done, and Bulwer can staunch their tears, and com- 
fort again their wounded hearts. 

Whenever an injunction is laid upon plain and 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 183 

undeniable scripture-truth, and I am forbidden, upon 
pain of your displeasure, to preach it ; then, I should 
not so much regard my personal feelings, as the 
affront which you put upon my master; and in my 
inmost soul I shall resent that affront. There is no 
esteem, there is no love, like that which is founded 
in the sanctity of religion. Between many of you 
and me, that sanctity exists. I stood by your side 
when you awoke in the dark valley of conviction, 
and owned yourselves lost. I have led you by the 
hand out of the darkness; by your side I have 
prayed, and my tears have mingled with yours. I 
have bathed you in the crystal-waters of a holy 
baptism ; and when you sang the song of the ran- 
somed captive, it filled my heart with a joy as great 
as that which uttered it. Love, beginning in such 
scenes, and drawn from so sacred a fountain, is not 
commercial, not fluctuating. Amid severe toils and 
not a few anxieties, it is the crown of rejoicing to a 
Pastor. What have we in this world but you % To 
be your servant in the gospel, we renounce all those 
paths by which other men seek preferment. Silver 
and gold is not in our houses, and our names are 
not heard where fame proclaims others. Rest we 
are forbidden until death; and girded with the 
whole armor, our lives are spent in the dust and 
smoke of continued battle. But even such love will 



184 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

not tolerate bondage. We can be servants to love, 
but never slaves to caprice; still less can we heed 
the mandates of iniquity ! 






The proverbs of Solomon are designed to furnish 
us a series of maxims for every relation of life. 
There will naturally be the most said where there 
is the most needed. If the frequency of warning 
against any sin measures the liability of man to that 
sin, then none is worse than Impurity. In many 
separate passages is the solemn warning against 
the strange woman given with a force which must 
terrify all but the innocent or incorrigible ; and with 
a delicacy which all will feel but those whose mod- 
esty is the fluttering of an impure imagination. I 
shall take such parts of all these passages as will 
make out a connected narrative. 

When wisdom enter eth into thy heart, and knowl- 
edge is pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve 
thee . . . to deliver thee from the strange xooman, 
which Jlattereth with her tongue ; her lips drop as a 
honey-comb, her mouth is smoother than oil. She 
sitteth at the door of her house on a seat in the high 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 185 

places of the city, to call to passengers who go right 
on their ivays: u Whoso is simple let him turn in 
hither" To him that wanteth understanding, she 
saith, u Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in 
secret is pleasant ;" but he knoioeth not that the dead 
are there. Lust not after her beauty, neither let her 
take thee with her eyelids. She forsaketh the guide 
of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. 
Lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her ways 
are movable, that thou canst not know them. Remove 
thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door 
of her house, for her house inclineth unto death. She 
has cast down many wounded ; yea, many strong 
men have been slain by her. Her house is the way 
to hell, going down to the chamber of death ; none 
that go unto her, return again; neither take they 
hold of the paths of life. Let not thy heart decline 
to her ways, lest thou mourn at last, when thy flesh 
and thy body are consumed, and say : u How have T 
hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof. I 
was in all evil in the midst of the congregation and 
assembly." 

I. Can language be found which can draw a cor- 
rupt beauty so vividly as this ; Which forsaketh the 
guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of 
her God. Look out upon that fallen creature whose 
gay sally through the street calls out the significant 
16* 



186 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

laugh of bad men, the pity of good men, and the 
horror of the pure. Was not her cradle as pure 
as ever a loved infant pressed? Love soothed its 
cries. Sisters watched its peaceful sleep, and a 
mother pressed it fondly to her bosom ! Had you 
afterwards, when spring-flowers covered the earth, 
and every gale was odor, and every sound was 
music, seen her, fairer than the lily or the violet, 
searching them, would you not have said, " Sooner 
shall the rose grow poisonous than she ; both may 
wither, but neither corrupt." And how often, at 
evening, did she clasp her tiny hands in prayer ? 
How often did she put the wonder-raising questions 
to her mother, of God, and heaven, and the dead — 
as if she had seen heavenly things in a vision! 
As young womanhood advanced, and these fore- 
shadowed graces ripened to the bud and burst into 
bloom, health glowed in her cheek, love looked from 
her eye, and purity was an atmosphere around her. 
Alas ! she forsook the guide of her youth. Faint 
thoughts of evil, like a far-off cloud which the sun- 
set gilds, came first ; nor does the rosy sunset blush 
deeper along the heaven, than her cheek, at the 
first thought of evil. Now, ah ! mother, and thou 
guiding elder sister, could you have seen the lurking 
spirit embosomed in that cloud, a holy prayer might 
have broken the spell, a tear have washed its stain ! 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 187 

Alas ! they saw it not ; she spoke it not ; she was 
forsaking the guide of her youth. She thinketh 
no more of heaven. She breatheth no more prayers. 
She hath no more penitential tears to shed; until, 
after a long life, she drops the bitter tear upon 
the cheek of despair,— -then her only suitor. Thou 
hast forsaken the covenant of thy God. Go down ! 
fall never to rise ! Hell opens to be thy home ! 

Oh Prince of torment ! if thou hast transforming 
power, give some relief to this once innocent child, 
whom another has corrupted ! Let thy deepest 
damnation seize him who brought her hither ! let 
his coronation be upon the very mount of torment ! 
and the rain of fiery hail be his salutation! He 
shall be crowned with thorns poisoned and anguish- 
bearing ; and every woe beat upon him, and every 
wave of hell roll over the first risings of baffled 
hope. Thy guilty thoughts, and guilty deeds, shall 
, flit after thee with bows which never break, and 
I quivers forever emptying but never exhausted ! If 
i Satan hath one dart more poisoned than another; 
if God hath one bolt more transfixing and blast- 
ing than another ; if there be one hideous spirit 
more unrelenting than others ; they shall be thine, 
most execrable wretch ! who led her to forsake the 
guide of her youth, and to abandon the covenant of 
! her God. 



188 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

II. The next injunction of God to the young is 
upon the ensnaring danger of Beauty. Desire not 
her beauty in thy hearty neither let her take thee with 
her eyelids. God did not make so much of nature 
with exquisite beauty, or put within us a taste for it, 
without object. He meant that it should delight us. 
He made every flower to charm us. He never made 
a color, nor graceful-flying bird, nor silvery insect, 
without meaning to please our taste. When He 
clothes a man or woman with beauty, He confers a 
favor, did we know how to receive it. Beauty, with 
amiable dispositions and ripe intelligence, is more to 
any woman than a queen's crown. The peasant's 
daughter, the rustic belle, if they have woman's 
sound discretion, may be rightfully prouder than 
kings' daughters; for God adorns those who are 
both good and beautiful ; man can onty conceal the 
want of beauty, by blazing jewels. 

As moths and tiny insects flutter around the bright 
blaze which was kindled for no harm, so the foolish 
young, fall down burned and destroyed by the 
blaze of beauty. As the flame which burns to de- 
stroy the insect, is consuming itself and soon sinks 
into the socket, so beauty, too often, draws on itself 
that ruin which it inflicts upon others. 

If God hath given thee beauty, tremble ; for it is 
as gold in thy house — thieves and robbers will 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 189 

prowl around and seek to possess it. If God hath 
put beauty before thine eyes, remember how many 
strong men have been cast down wounded by it. 
Art thou stronger than David 1 Art thou stronger 
than mighty patriarchs? — than kings and princes, 
who, by its fascinations, have lost peace and purity, 
and honor, and riches, and armies, and even king- 
doms ? Let other men's destruction be thy wisdom ; 
for it is hard to reap prudence upon the field of ex- 
perience. 

III. In the minute description of this dangerous 
creature, mark next how seriously we are cautioned 
of her Wiles. 

Her wiles of dress. Coverings of tapestry and 

the fine linen of Egypt are hers ; the perfumes of 

myrrh and aloes and cinnamon. Silks and ribbons, 

laces and rings, gold and equipage; ah! how mean 

a price for damnation. The wretch who would be 

hung simply for the sake of riding to the gallows on 

a golden chariot, clothed in king's raiment — what a 

j fool were he ! Yet how many consent to enter the 

i chariot of Death, — drawn by the fiery steeds of lust 

j which fiercely fly, and stop not for food or breath 

\ till they have accomplished their fatal journey — if 

I they may spread their seat with flowery silks, or 

j flaunt their forms with glowing apparel and precious 

jewels ! 



190 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

Her wiles of speech. Beasts may not speak; this 
honor is too high for them. To God's imaged-son 
this prerogative belongs, to utter thought and feel- 
ing in articulate sounds. We may breathe our 
thoughts to a thousand ears, and infect a multitude 
with the best portions of our soul. How, then, has 
this soul's breath, this echo of our thoughts, this only 
image of our feelings, been perverted, that from the 
lips of sin it hath more persuasion, than from the 
lips of wisdom ! What horrid wizard hath put the 
world under a spell and charm, that words from the 
lips of a strange woman shall ring upon the ear like 
tones of music ; while words from the divine lips of 
religion fall upon the startled ear like the funeral 
tones of the burial-bell ! Philosophy seems crabbed ; 
sin, fair. Purity sounds morose and cross ; but from 
the lips of the harlot, words drop as honey, and 
flow smoother than oil ; her speech is fair, her laugh 
is merry as music. The eternal glory of purity has 
no lustre, but the deep damnation of lust is made 
as bright as the gate of heaven ! 

Her io les of love. Love is the mind's light and 
heat ; it is that tenuous air in which all the other 
faculties exist, as we exist in the atmosphere. A 
mind of the greatest stature without love, is like the 
huge pyramid of Egypt — chill and cheerless in all 
its dark halls and passages. A mind with love, is 
as a king's palace lighted for a royal festival. 



II 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 191 

Shame ! that the sweetest of all the mind's attri- 
butes should be suborned to sin ! that this daughter 
of Cfod should become a Ganymede to arrogant 
lusts ! — the cup-bearer to tyrants ! — yet so it is. 
Devil-tempter ! will thy poison never cease ?— shall 
beauty be poisoned ?— shall language be charmed ? 
—shall love be made to defile like pitch, and burn 
as the living coals ? Her tongue is like a bended 
bow, which sends the silvery shaft of flattering 
words. Her eyes shall cheat thee, her dress shall 
beguile thee, her beauty is a trap, her sighs are 
baits, her words are lures, her love is poisonous, her 
flattery is the spider's web spread for thee. Oh ! 
trust not thy heart nor ear with Delilah ! The locks 
of the mightiest Samson are soon shorn off, if he 
will but lay his slumbering head upon her lap. He 
who could slay heaps upon heaps of Philistines, and 
bear upon his huge shoulders the ponderous iron- 
gate, and pull down the vast temple, was yet too 
weak to contend with one wicked artful woman! 
Trust the sea with thy tiny boat, trust the fickle 
wind, trust the changing skies of April, trust the 
miser's generosity, the tyrant's mercy; but ah! 
simple man, trust not thyself near the artful wo- 
man, armed in her beauty, her cunning raiment, her 
dimpled smiles, her sighs of sorrow, her look of love, 
j her voice of flattery ;— for if thou hadst the strength 



192 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

of ten Ulysses, unless God help thee, Calypso shall 
make thee fast, and hold thee in her island ! 

Next beware the wile of her reasonings. To him 
that wanteth understanding she saith, stolen waters 
are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. I 
came forth to meet thee, and I have found thee. 

What says she in the credulous ear of inexperi- 
ence? Why, she tells himthat sin is safe; she 
swears to him that sin is pure ; she protests to him 
that sin is innocent. Out of history she will entice 
him, and say : Who hath ever refused my meat- 
offerings and drink-offerings? What king have 
I not sought? What conqueror have I not con- 
quered ? Philosophers have not, in all their wisdom, 
learned to hate me. I have been the guest of the 
world's greatest men. The Egyptian priest, the 
Athenian sage, the Roman censor, the rude Gaul, 
have all ivorshipped in my temple. Art thou afraid 
to tread where Plato trod, and the pious Socrates? 
Art thou wiser than all that ever lived? 

Nay, she readeth the Bible to him; she goeth 
back along the line of history, and readeth of Abra- 
ham, and of his glorious compeers; she skippeth 
past Joseph with averted looks, and readeth of 
David and of Solomon-; and whatever chapter tells 
how good men stumbled, there she has turned down 
a leaf, and will persuade thee, with honeyed speech, 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 193 

that the best deeds of good men were their sins, 
and that thou shouldst only imitate them in their 
stumbling and falls ! 

Or, if the Bible will not cheat thee, how will she 
plead thine own nature; how will she whisper, God 
hath made thee so. How, like her father, will she 
lure thee to pluck the apple, saying, Thou shalt not 
surely die. And she will hiss at virtuous men, and 
spit on modest women, and shake her serpent-tongue 
at any purity which shall keep thee from her ways. 
Oh ! then, listen to what God says : With much 
fair speech she causeth him to yield; with the flat- 
tery of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her 
as an ox goeth to slaughter, or as a fool to the correc- 
Hon of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver, 
—as a bird hasteth to a snare and knoweth not that 
I it is for his life. 

I will point only to another wile. When inexpe- 
i rience has been beguiled by her infernaf machina- 
tions, how, like a flock of startled birds, will spring 
! up late regrets, and shame, and fear; and worst of 
| all, how will conscience ply her scorpion-whip and 
lash thee, uttering with stern visage, "thou art dis- 
honored, thou art a wretch, thou art lost ! " When 
the soul is full of such outcry, memory cannot 
sleep; she wakes, and while conscience still plies the 
scourge, will bring back to thy thoughts, youthful 
17 



194 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

purity, home, a mother's face, a sister's love, a 
father's counsel. Perhaps it is out of the high hea- 
ven that thy mother looks down to see thy baseness. 
Oh ! if she has a mother's heart, — nay, but she can- 
not weep for thee there ! 

These wholesome pains, not to be felt if there 
were not yet health in the mind, would save the vic- 
tim, could they have time to work. But how often 
have I seen the spider watch, from his dark round 
hole, the struggling fly, until he began to break his 
web ; and then dart out to cast his long lithe arms 
about him, and fasten new cords stronger than ever. 
So, God saith, the strange woman shall secure her 
ensnared victims, if they struggle : Lest thou shouldst 
ponder the path of life, her ways are movable that 
thou canst not know them. 

She is afraid to see thee soberly thinking of leav- 
ing her, and entering the path of life; therefore her 
ways are movable. She multiplies devices, she 
studies a thousand new wiles, she has some sweet 
word for every sense — obsequience for thy pride, 
praise for thy vanity, generosity for thy selfishness, 
religion for thy conscience, racy quips for thy weari- 
someness, spicy scandal for thy curiosity. She is 
never still, nor the same; but evolving as many 
* shapes as the rolling cloud, and as many colors as 
•dress the wide prairie. 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 195 

IV. Having disclosed her wiles, let me show you 
what God says of the chances of escape to those 
who once follow her : None that go unto her return 
again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. 
The strength of this language was not meant abso- 
lutely to exclude hope from those who, having wasted 
their substance in riotous living, would yet return ; 
but to warn the unfallen, into what an almost 
hopeless gulf they plunge, if they venture. Some 
may escape — as here and there a mangled sailor 
crawls out of the water upon the beach, — the only 
one or two of the whole crew ; the rest are gurgling 
in the wave with impotent struggles, or already sunk 
to the bottom. There are many evils which hold 
I their victims by the force of habit ; there are others 
which fasten them by breaking their return to so- 
ciety. Many a person never reforms, because reform 
would bring no relief. There are other evils which 
hold men to them, because they are like the begin- 
ning of a fire ; they tend to burn with fiercer and 
wider flames, until all fuel is consumed, and go out 
only when there is nothing to burn. Of this last 
kind is the sin of licentiousness: and when the 
conflagration once breaks out, experience has shown, 
what the Bible long ago declared, that the chances 
of reformation are few indeed. The certainty of 
continuance is so great, that the chances of escape 



196 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

are dropped from the calculation; and it is said 
roundly, none that go unto her return again. 

V. We are repeatedly warned against the strange 
woman's house. 

There is no vice like licentiousness, to delude 
with the most fascinating proffers of delight, and 
fulfil the promise with the most loathsome expe- 
rience. All vices at the beginning are silver- 
tongued, but none so impassioned as this. All 
vices in the end cheat their dupes, but none with 
such overwhelming disaster as licentiousness. I 
shall describe by an allegory, its specious seduc- 
tions, its plausible promises, its apparent innocence, 
its delusive safety, its deceptive joys, — their change, 
their sting, their flight, their misery, and the vic- 
tim's ruin. 

Her house has been cunningly planned by an evil 
architect to attract and please the attention. It 
stands in a vast garden full of enchanting objects. 
It shines in glowing colors, and seems full of peace 
and full of pleasure. All the signs are of unbounded 
enjoyment — safe, if not innocent. Though every 
beam is rotten, and the house is the house of death, 
and in it are all the vicissitudes of infernal misery ; 
yet to the young it appears a palace of delight. 
They will not believe that death can lurk behind so 
brilliant a fabric. Those who are within, look out 



THF STRANGE WOMAN. 197 

and pine to return, and those who are without, look 
in and pine to enter. Such is the mastery of delu- 
ding sin. 

That part of the garden which borders on the 
highway of innocence is carefully planted. There 
is not a poison-weed, nor thorn, nor thistle there. 
Ten thousand flowers bloom, and waft a thousand 
odors. A victim cautiously inspects it; but it has 
been too carefully patterned upon innocency to be 
easily detected. This outer garden is innocent;— 
innocence is the lure to wile you from the path into 
her grounds;— innocence is the bait of that trap by 
which she has secured all her victims. At the gate 
stands a comely porter, saying blandly: Whoso is 
simple let him turn in hither. Will the youth enter ? 
Will he seek her house? To himself he says, "I 
will enter only to see the garden,— its fruits, its 
flowers, its birds, its arbors, its warbling fountains ! " 
He is resolved in virtue. He seeks wisdom, not 
pleasure !— Dupe ! you are deceived already; and 
this is your first lesson of wisdom. He passes, and 
the porter leers behind him ! He is within an En- 
chanter's garden ! Can he not now return, if he 
wishes?— he will not wish to return, until it is too 
late. He ranges the outer garden near to the high- 
way, thinking as he walks : " How foolishly have I 
oeen alarmed at pious lies about this beautiful 
17* 



198 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

place ! I heard it was Hell : I find it is Para- 
dise!" 

Emboldened by the innocency of his first steps, 
he explores the garden further from the road. The 
flowers grow richer ; their odors exhilarate ; the 
very fruit breathes perfume like flowers ; and birds 
seem intoxicated with delight among the fragrant 
shrubs and loaded trees. Soft and silvery music 
steals along the air. "Are angels singing? — Oh! 
fool that I was, to fear this place ; it is all the heaven 
I need ! Ridiculous priest, to tell me that death was 
here, where all is beauty, fragrance, and melody! 
Surely, death never lurked in so gorgeous apparel 
as this ! Death is grim, and hideous ! " He hai 
come near to the strange woman's house. If it was 
beautiful from afar, it is celestial now ; for his eyes 
are bewitched with magic. When our passions 
enchant us, how beautiful is the way to death ! In 
every window are sights of pleasure; from every 
opening, issue sounds of joy — the lute, the harp, 
bounding feet, and echoing laughter. Nymphs have 
descried this Pilgrim of temptation ; — they smile 
and beckon. Where are his resolutions now? This 
is the virtuous youth who came to observe! He 
has already seen too much ! but he will see more ; 
he will taste, feel, regret, weep, wail, die! The 
most beautiful nymph that eye ever rested on, 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 199 

approaches with decent guise and modest gestures, 
to give him hospitable welcome. For a moment he 
recalls his home, his mother, his sister-circle ; but 
they seem far-away, dim, powerless ! Into his ear 
the beautiful herald pours the sweetest sounds of 
love : " You are welcome here, and worthy ! You ' 
have early wisdom, to break the bounds of super- 
stition, and to seek these grounds where summer 
never ceases, and sorrow never comes ! Hail ! and 
welcome to the House of pleasure ! " There seemed 
to be a response to these words; the house, the 
trees, and the very air, seemed to echo, " Hail .' and 
welcome ! " In the stillness which followed, had the 
victim been less intoxicated, he might have heard a 
clear and solemn voice which seemed to fall straight 
down from heaven : Come not nigh the door of her 
house. Her house is the way to hell, going down 

TO THE CHAMBERS OF DEATH.' 

It is too late ! He has gone in,— who shall never 
return. He goeth after her straightway as an ox gpeth 
to the slaughter; or as a fool to the correction of 
the stocks . . . and knoweth not t/iai it is for his 
life. 

Enter with me, in imagination, the strange wo- 
man's house— where, God grant you may never 
enter in any other way. There are five wards- 
Pleasure, Satiety, Discovery, Disease, and Death. 



200 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

Ward of Pleasure. — The eye is dazzled with the 
magnificence of its apparel, — elastic velvet, glossy 
silks, burnished satin, crimson drapery, plushy car- 
pets. Exquisite pictures glow upon the walls, carved 
marble adorns every niche. The inmates are de- 
ceived by these lying shows ; they dance, they sing ; 
with beaming eyes they utter softest strains of flat- 
tery and graceful compliment. They partake the 
amorous wine, and the repast which loads the table. 
They eat, they drink, they are blithe and merry. 
Surely, they should be ; for after this brief hour, 
they shall never know purity nor joy again ! For 
this moment's revelry, they are selling heaven! 
The strange woman walks among her guests in all 
her charms ; fans the flame of joy, scatters grateful 
odors, and urges on the fatal revelry. As her pois- 
oned wine is quaffed, and the gay creatures begin to 
reel, the torches wane and cast but a twilight. One 
by one, the guests grow somnolent ; and, at length, 
they all repose. Their cup is exhausted, their plea- 
sure is forever over, life has exhaled to an essence, 
and that is consumed ! While they sleep, servitors, 
practised to the work, remove them all to another 
Ward. 

Ward of Satiety. — Here reigns a bewildering twi- 
light through which can hardly be discerned the 
wearied inmates, yet sluggish upon their couches. 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 201 

Overflushed with dance, sated with wine and fruit, 
a fitful drowsiness vexes them. They wake, to 
crave ; they taste, to loathe ; they sleep, to dream : 
they wake again from unquiet visions. They long 
for the sharp taste of pleasure, so grateful yesterday. 
Again they sink, repining to sleep ; by starts, they 
rouse at an ominous dream; by starts, they hear 
strange cries ! The fruit burns and torments ; the 
wine shoots sharp pains through their pulse. Strange 
wonder fills them. They remember the recent joy, 
as a reveller in the morning thinks of his midnight- 
madness. The glowing garden and the banquet 
now seem all stripped and gloomy. They meditate 
return ; pensively they long for their native spot ! At 
sleepless moments, mighty resolutions form, — sub- 
stantial as a dream. Memory grows dark. Hope 
will not shine. The past is not pleasant; the present 
is wearisome ; and the future gloomy. 

The Ward of Discovery.— In the third ward no 
deception remains. The floors are bare ; the naked 
walls drip filth ; the air is poisonous with sickly 
fumes, and echoes with mirth concealing hideous 
misery. None supposes that he has been happy. 
The past seems like the dream of the miser, who 
gathers gold spilled like rain upon the road, and 
wakes, clutching his bed, and crying " where is it?" 
On your right hand, as you enter, close by the door, 



202 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

is a group of fierce felons in deep drink with drug- 
ged liquor. With red and swoln faces, or white 
and thin; or scarred with ghastly corruption ; with 
scowling brows, baleful eyes, bloated lips and de- 
moniac grins; — in person all uncleanly, in morals 
all debauched, in peace, bankrupt — the desperate 
wretches wrangle one with the other, swearing bit- 
ter oaths, and heaping reproaches each upon each ! 
Around the room you see miserable creatures unap- 
pareled, or dressed in rags, sobbing and moaning. 
That one who gazes out at the window, calling for 
her mother and weeping, was right tenderly and 
purely bred. She has been baptized twice,— once to 
God, and once to the Devil. She sought this place 
in the very vestments of God's house. "Call not 
on thy mother ! she is a saint in Heaven, and can- 
not hear thee ! " Yet, all night long she dreams of 
home, and childhood, and wakes to sigh and weep : 
and between her sobs, she cries "mother! mother !' T 
Yonder is a youth, once a servant at God's altar. 
His hair hangs tangled and torn; his eyes are blood- 
shot ; his face is livid ; his fist is clenched. All the 
day, he wanders up and down, cursing sometimes 
himself, and sometimes the wretch that brought him 
hither ; and when he sleeps, he dreams of Hell ; 
and then he wakes to feel all he dreamed. This is 
the Ward of reality. All know why the first rooms 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 203 

looked so gay— they were enchanted ! It was en- 
chanted wine they drank ; and enchanted fruit they 
ate : now they know the pain of fatal food in everv 
limb! ' 

Ward of Disease—Ye that look wistfully at the 
pleasant front of this terrific house, come with me 
now, and look long into the terror of this Ward; for 
here are the seeds of sin in their full harvest form! 
We are in a lazar-room; its air oppresses every 
sense; its sights confound our thoughts; its sounds 
pierce our ear; its stench repels us; it is full f dis- 
eases. Here a shuddering wretch is clawing at his 
breast, to tear away that worm which gnaws his 
heart. By him is another, whose limbs are drop- 
ping from his ghastly trunk. Next, swelters another 
in reeking filth; his eyes rolling in bony sockets, 
every breath a pang, and every pang a groan. But 
yonder, on a pile of rags, lies one whose yells of 
frantic agony appall every ear. Clutching his rags 
with spasmodic grasp, his swoln tongue lolling from 
a blackened mouth, his bloodshot eyes glaring and 
rolling, he shrieks oaths; now blaspheming God 
and now imploring him. He hoots and shouts, and 
shakes his grisly head from side to side, cursing or 
praying; now calling death, and then, as if driving 
away fiends, yelling, avaunt ! avaunt ! 
Another has been ridden by pain, until he can no 



204 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

longer shriek; but lies foaming and grinding his 
teeth, and clenches his bony hands, until the nails 
pierce the palm — though there is no blood there to 
issue out— trembling all the time with the shudders 
and chills of utter agony. The happiest wretch in 
all this Ward, is an Idiot --dropsical, distorted, and 
moping; all day he wags his head, and chatters, 
and laughs, and bites his nails ; then he will sit for 
hours motionless, with open jaw, and glassy eye 
fixed on vacancy. In this ward are huddled all the 
diseases of pleasure. This is the torture-room of 
the strange woman's House, and it excels the Inqui- 
sition. The wheel, the rack ; the bed of knives, the 
roasting fire, the brazen room slowly heated, the 
slivers driven under the nails, the hot pincers, — what 
are these to the agonies of the last days of licentious 
vice? Hundreds of rotting wretches would change 
their couch of torment in the strange woman's 
House, for the gloomiest terror of the Inquisition, 
and profit by the change. Nature herself becomes 
the tormentor. Nature, long trespassed on and 
abused, at length casts down the wretch ; searches 
every vein, makes a road of every nerve for the 
scorching feet of pain to travel on, pulls at every 
muscle, breaks in the breast, builds fires in the brain, 
eats out the skin, and casts living coals of torment 
on the heart. What are hot pincers to the enven- 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 205 

omed claws of disease? What is it to be put into a 
pit of snakes and slimy toads, and feel their cold 
coil or piercing fang, to the creeping of a whole 
body of vipers?-where every nerve is a viper, and 
every vein a viper, and every muscle a serpent; and 
the whole body, in all its p^ts, coils and twists upon 
itself in unimaginable anguish? I tell you, there 
is no Inquisition so bad as that which the Doctor 
looks upon! Young man? I can show you in this 
Ward worse pangs than ever a savage produced at 
I the stake!— than ever a tyrant wrung out by en- 
; gines of torment !— than ever an inquisitor devised ! 
, Every year, in every town, die wretches scalded 
and scorched with agony. Were the sum of all the 
I pain that comes with the last stages of vice collected, 
it would rend the very heavens with its outcry; 
would shake the earth; would even blanch the 
cheek of Infatuation ! Ye that are listening in the 
garden of this strange woman, among her cheating 
flowers; ye that are dancing in her halls in the first 
jWard, come hither; look upon her fourth Ward- 
( its vomited blood, its sores and fiery blotches, its 
prurient sweat, its dissolving ichor, and rotten 
bones! Stop, young man! You turn your head 
from this ghastly room; and yet, stop !-and stop 
soon, or thou shalt lie here ! mark the solemn signals 
of thy passage! Thou hast had already enough 
18 



206 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

of warnings in thy cheek, in thy bosom, in thy 
pangs of premonition ! 

But ah ! every one of you who are dancing with 
the covered paces of death, in the strange woman's 
first hall, let me break your spell ; for now I shall 
open the doors of the last Ward. Look !— Listen !— 
Witness your own end, unless you take quickly a 
warning ! 

Ward of Death. — No longer does the incarnate 
wretch pretend to conceal her cruelty. She thrusts 
— aye! as if they were dirt — she shovels out the 
wretches. Some fall headlong through the rotten 
floor,— a long fall to a fiery bottom. The floor trem- 
bles to deep thunders which roll below. Here and 
there, jets of flame sprout up, and give a lurid light 
to the murky hall. Some would fain escape ; and 
flying across the treacherous floor, which man never 
safely passed, they go, through pitfalls and treacher- 
ous traps, with hideous outcries and astounding 
yells, to perdition ! Fiends laugh ! The infer- 
nal laugh, the cry of agony, the thunder of dam- 
nation, shake the very roof and echo from wall to 
wall. 

Oh ! that the young might see the end of vice 
before they see the beginning! I know that you 
shrink from this picture; but your safety requires 
that you should look long into the Ward of Death, 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 207 

that fear may supply strength to your virtue. See 
the blood oozing from the wall, the fiery hands 
which pluck the wretches down, the light of hell 
gleaming through, and hear its roar as of a distant 
ocean chafed with storms. Will you sprinkle the 
wall with your blood ? — will you feed those flames 
with your flesh ? — will you add your voice to those 
thundering wails?— will you go down a prey 
through the fiery floor of the chamber of death? 
Believe then the word of God : Her house is the way 
to hell , going down to the chambers of death, . . . 
avoid U } pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away! 
I have described the strange woman's House in 
strong language, and it needed it. If your taste 
shrinks from the description, so does mine. Hell, 
and all the ways of hell, when we pierce the cheat- 
ing disguises and see the truth, are terrible and try- 
ing to behold ; and if men would not walk there, 
neither would we pursue their steps, to sound the 
alarm, and gather back whom we can. 

Allow me to close by directing your attention to a 
few points of especial danger. 

I. I solemnly warn you against indulging a mor- 
bid imagination. In that busy and mischievous 
faculty begins the evil. Were it not for his airy 
imaginations, man might stand his own master— not 
overmatched by the worst part of himself. But ah ! 



208 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

these summer-reveries, these venturesome dreams, 
these fairy castles, builded for no good purposes, — 
they are haunted by impure spirits, who will fasci- 
nate, bewitch, and corrupt you. Blessed are the 
pure in heart. Blessed art thou, most favored of 
God, whose thoughts are chastened ; whose imag- 
ination will not breathe or fly in tainted air ; and 
whose path hath been measured by the golden reed 
of Purity. 

May I not paint Purity, as a saintly virgin, in 
spotless white, walking with open face, in an air so 
clear that no vapor can stain it ? 

" Upon her lightning-brow love proudly sitting, 
Flames out in power, shines out in majesty." 

Her steps are a queen's steps ; God is her father, and 
thou her brother, if thou wilt make her thine ! Let 
thy heart be her dwelling ; wear upon thy hand her 
ring, and on thy breast her talisman. 

II. Next to evil imaginations, I warn the young 
of evil companions. Decaying fruit corrupts the 
neighboring fruit. You cannot make your head a 
metropolis of base stories, the ear and tongue a 
highway of immodest words, and yet be pure. 
Another, as well as yourself, may throw a spark on 
the magazine of your passions — beware how your 
companions do it ! No man is your friend who will 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 209 

corrupt you. An impure man is every good man's 
enemy — your deadly foe ; and all the worse, if he 
hide his poisoned dagger under the cloak of good 
fellowship. Therefore, select your associates, assort 
them, winnow them, keep the grain, and let the wind 
sweep away the chaff. 

III. But I warn you, with yet more solemn em- 
phasis, against evil books and evil pictures. There 
is in every town an under-current which glides be- 
neath our feet unsuspected by the pure; out of 
Avhich, notwithstanding, our sons scoop many a 
goblet. Books are hidden in trunks, concealed in 
dark holes; pictures are stored in sly portfolios, or 
trafficked from hand to hand ; and the handiwork 
of depraved art is seen in other forms which ought 
to make a harlot blush. 

I should think a man would loathe himself, and 
wake up from owning such things as from a horrible 
nightmare. Those who circulate them are incen- 
diaries of morality ; those who make them, equal 
the worst public criminals. A -pure heart would 
shrink from these abominable things as from death. 
France, where religion long ago went out smothered 
in licentiousness, has flooded the world with a spe- 
cies of literature redolent of depravity. Upon the 
plea of exhibiting nature and man, novels are now 
scooped out of the very lava of corrupt passions. 
18* 



210 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

They are true to nature, but to nature as it exists 
in knaves and courtesans. Under a plea of human- 
ity, we have shown up to us, troops of harlots, to 
prove that they are not so bad as purists think ; 
gangs of desperadoes, to show that there is nothing 
in crime inconsistent with the noblest feelings. We 
have in French and English novels of the infernal 
school, humane murderers, lascivious saints, holy 
infidels, honest robbers. These artists never seem 
lost, except when straining after a conception of re 
ligion. Their devotion is such as might be expected 
from thieves, in the purlieus of thrice-deformed 
vice. Exhausted libertines are our professors of 
morality. They scrape the very sediment and muck 
of society to mould their creatures; and their vol- 
umes are monster-galleries, in which the inhabitants 
of old Sodom would have felt at home as connois 
seurs and critics. Over loathsome women, and 
unutterably vile men, huddled together in motley 
groups, and over all their monstrous deeds, their 
lies, their plots, their crimes, their dreadful pleasures, 
their glorying conversation, is thrown the check- 
ered light of a hot imagination, until they glow with 
an infernal lustre. Novels of the French school, 
and of English imitators, are the common-sewers 
of society, into which drain the concentrated filth 
of the worst passions, of the worst creatures, of the 






THE STRANGE WOMAN. 211 

worst cities. Such novels come to us impudently- 
pretending to be reformers of morals and liberalizers 
of religion ; they propose to instruct our laws, and 
teach a discreet humanity to justice! The Ten 
Plagues have visited our literature ; water is turned 
to blood; frogs and lice creep and hop over our 
most familiar things, — the couch, the cradle, and 
the bread-trough; locusts, murrain, and fire, are 
smiting every green thing. I am ashamed and out- 
raged when I think that wretches could be found to 
open these foreign seals, and let out their plagues 
upon us — that any Satanic Pilgrim should voyage 
to France to dip from the dead sea of her abomin- 
ation, a baptism for our sons. It were a mercy to 
this, to import serpents from Africa and pour them 
out on our prairies ; lions from Asia, and free them 
in our forests ; lizards and scorpions and black taran- 
tulas, from the Indies, and put them in our gardens. 
Men could slay these, but those offspring-reptiles 
of the French mind, who can kill these? You 
might as well draw sword on a plague, or charge 
a malaria with the bayonet. This black-lettered 
literature circulates in this town, floats in our stores, 
nestles in the shops, is fingered and read nightly, 
and hatches in the young mind broods of salacious 
thoughts. While the parent strives to infuse Chris- 
tian purity into his child's heart, he is anticipated 



212 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

by most accursed messengers of evil ; and the heart 
hisses already like a nest of young and nimble 
vipers. 

IV. Once more, let me persuade you that no ex- 
amples in high places, can justify imitation in low 
places. Your purity is too precious to be bartered, 
because an official knave tempts by his example. I 
would that every eminent place of state were a 
sphere of light, from which should be flung down 
on your path a cheering glow to guide you on to 
virtue. But if these wandering stars, reserved I do 
believe for final blackness of darkness, wheel their 
malign spheres in the orbits of corruption, — go not 
after them. God is greater than wicked great men ; 
heaven is higher than the highest places of nations; 
and if God and heaven are not brighter to your eyes 
than great men in high places, then you must take 
part in their doom, when, ere long, God shall dash 
them to pieces ! 

V. Let me beseech you, lastly, to guard your 
heart-purity. Never lose it ; if it be gone, you have 
lost from the casket the most precious gift of God. 
The first purity of imagination, of thought, and of 
feeling, if soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap; 
if lost, cannot be found, though sought carefully 
with tears. If a harp be broken, art may repair it ; 
if a light be quenched, the flame may enkindle it; 



THE STRANGE WOMAN. 213 



but if a flower be crushed, what art can repair it ?- 
if an odor be wafted away, who can collect or bring 
it back? 

The heart of youth is a wide prairie. Over it 
hang the clouds of heaven to water it, the sun 
throws its broad sheets of light upon it, to wake its 
life ; out of its bosom spring, the long season through, 
flowers of a hundred names and hues, twining 
together their lovely forms, wafting to each other 
a grateful odor, and nodding each to each in the 
summer-breeze. Oh ! such would man be, did he 
hold that purity of heart which God gave him ! 
But you have a depraved heart. It is a vast conti- 
nent; on it are mountain-ranges of powers, and 
dark deep streams, and pools, and morasses. If once 
the full and terrible clouds of temptation do settle 
thick and fixedly upon you, and begin to cast down 
their dreadful stores, may God save whom man can 
never ! Then the heart shall feel tides and streams 
of irresistible power, mocking its control, and hurry- 
ing fiercely down from steep to steep, with growing 
desolation. Your only resource is to avoid the 
uprising of your giant-passions. 

We are drawing near to a festival day,* by the 
usage of ages, consecrated to celebrate the birth of 
Christ. At his advent, God hung out a prophet-star 

* This Lecture was delivered upon Christmas-eve. 



214 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 

in the heaven ; guided by it, the wise men journeyed 
from the east and worshipped at his feet. Oh ! let 
the star of Purity hang out to thine eye, brighter 
than the orient orb to the Magi ; let it lead thee, not 
to the Babe, but to His feet who now stands in 
Heaven, a Prince and Saviour ! If thou hast sin- 
ned, one look, one touch, shall cleanse thee whilst 
thou art worshipping, and thou shalt rise up healed. 

Note. — The exceptions taken to the current reformation-novels of God- 
win, Bulwer, Dickens, (perhaps,) Eugene Sue, and a host of others^ 
require a word of explanation. 1. We do not object to any reasonable 
effort at reformation, moral, social, civil, or economical — much is needed. 
So far, the design of this school of romancers is praiseworthy. 2. But 
we doubt the propriety of employing fictions as an instrument ; especially 
fictions wrought to produce a stage-effect, a violent thrill, rather than a 
conviction. These works affect the feelings more than the opinions. 3. 
Nine tenths of novel -readers are the young, the unreflecting, or those whose 
hearts have been macadamised by the incessant tramping of ten times ten 
thousand heroes and heroines, marching across their feelings. Efforts at 
reformation should be directed to other readers than these. 4. But the 
worst is yet to be told. Under the pretence of social reformations, the 
most flagitious vices are inculcated. There can be no doubt of it. An 
analysis of the best characters would give pride, lawlessness, passion, 
revenge, lusts, hypocrisies ; in short, a catalogue of vices. Eugene Sue 
seeks to raise the operatives, to show the ruinous partiality of law, the 
hideous evils of prisons, &c, &c. The design appears well. What part of 
this design are the constant and deliberate lies of Rodolphe, the hero? 
This wandering prince coolly justifies himself in putting out a man's eyes, 
because the law would slay him if delivered up! — provides means for 
decoying convicts from prison ! — sets on foot atrocious deceptions, to crush 
deceptions ! This is the best character in the far-famed Mysteries of Paris. 
Unquestionably the purest woman is Goualeuse, redeemed from prostitu- 
tion ! Madame Lucenay lives in unblushing adultery with Saint Remy, 
who proves to be a forger ! We are edified by a scene of noble indigna- 
tion and virtue, in which this woman, who has violated the most sacred 
instincts, and all the sanctities of the family, teaches Remy his degrada- 
tion for violating civil laws ! Admirable reform ! An unblushing adul- 
teress preaches so well to her paramour forger ! The diabolical voluptu- 
ousness of Cecily— the assignations of the pure Madame D'Harville — the 
astonishing reformations produced in a single hour, in which harlots turn 
vestals, murderers philanthropists, poachers and marauders more honest 
than honest men — these are but specimens of the instruments by which this 
new and popular reform is changing our morals, and Christianizing us ! 
What then shall be said of the works of George Sands, Masson, Dumas, 
M. de Balsac and others like them, by whose side Eugene Sue is an angel 
of purity ? A bookseller in a large city on the Ohio river, on being asked, 
of what work he sold the most, replied — "of Paul de Koch! " — the lit' 
erary prince of nastiness. 



LECTURE VII. 



Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the 
days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight 
of thine eyes ; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring 
thee into judgment. Eccl. xi. 9. 

I am to venture the delicate task of reprehension, 
always unwelcome, but peculiarly offensive upon 
topics of public popular amusement. I am anxious, 
in the beginning, to put myself right with the young. 
If I satisfy myself, Christian men, and the sober com- 
munity, and do not satisfy them, my success will be 
like a physician's, whose prescriptions please him- 
self, and the relations, and do good to everybody 
except the patient, — he dies. 

Allow me, first of all, to satisfy you that I am not 
meddling with matters which do not concern me. 
This is the impression which the patrons and part- 
ners of criminal amusements study to make upon 
your minds. They represent our duty to be in the 
church, — taking care of doctrines, and of our own 
members. When more than this is attempted; when 



216 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

we speak a word for you who are not church-mem- 
bers, we are met with the surly answer, " Why do 
you meddle with things which don't concern you ? 
If you do not enjoy these pleasures, why do you 
molest those who do? May not men do as they 
please in a free country, without being hung up in 
a gibbet of public remark?" It is conveniently for- 
gotten, I suppose, that in a free country we have 
the same right to criticise pleasure, which others 
have to enjoy it. Indeed, you and I both know, 
young gentlemen, that in coffee-house circles, and 
in convivial feasts nocturnal, the Church is regarded 
as little better than a spectacled old beldam, whose 
impertinent eyes are spying everybody's business 
but her own; and who, too old or too homely 
to be tempted herself, with compulsory virtue, pouts 
at the joyous dalliances of the young and gay. 
Religion is called a nun, sable with gloomy vest- 
ments ; and the Church a cloister, where ignorance 
is deemed innocence, and which sends out querulous 
reprehensions of a world, which it knows nothing 
about, and has professedly abandoned. This is 
pretty; and is only defective, in not being true. The 
Church is not a cloister, nor her members recluses, 
nor are our censures of vice intermeddling. Not to 
dwell in generalities, let us take a plain and common 
case: 






POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 217 

A strolling company offer to educate our youth ; 
and to show the community the road of morality, 
which, probably they have not seen themselves for 
twenty years. We cannot help laughing at a gen- 
erosity so much above one's means : and when they 
proceed to hew and hack each other with rusty iron, 
to teach our boys valor; and dress up practical 
mountebanks, to teach theoretical virtue; if we 
laugh somewhat more, they turn upon us testily: 
Do you mind your own business, and leave us with 
ours. We do not interfere with your preaching, do 
you let alone our acting. 

But softly — may not religious people amuse them- 
selves with very diverting men? I hope it is not 
bigotry to have eyes and ears: I hope it is not 
fanaticism, in the use of these excellent senses, for us 
to judge that throwing one's heels higher than their 
head a-dancing, is not exactly the way to teach 
virtue to our daughters; and that women, whose 
genial warmth of temperament has led them into a 
generosity something too great, are not the persons 
to teach virtue, at any rate. Oh! no; we are told, 
Christians must not know that all this is very sin- 
gular. Christians ought to think that men who are 
kings and dukes and philosophers on the stage, are 
virtuous men, even if they gamble at night, and are 
drunk all day ; and if men are so used to comedy, 
19 



I 



218 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

that their life becomes a perpetual farce on morality, 
we have no right to laugh at this extra professional 
acting ! 

Are we meddlers, who only seek the good of our 
own families, and of our own community where we 
live and expect to die? or they, who wander up and 
down without ties of social connection, and without 
aim, except of money to be gathered off from men's 
vices? 

I am anxious to put all religious men in their 
right position before you ; and in this controversy 
between them and the gay world, to show you the 
facts upon both sides. A floating population, in 
pairs or companies, without leave asked, blow the 
trumpet for all our youth to flock to their banners ! 
Are they related to them? — are they concerned in 
the welfare of our town ? — do they live among us ? 
— do they bear any part of our burdens ? — do they 
care for our substantial citizens? We grade our 
streets, build our schools, support all our municipal 
laws, and the young men are ours ; our sons, our 
brothers^ our wards, clerks, or apprentices ; they 
are living in our houses, our stores, our shops, and 
we are their guardians, and take care of them in 
health, and watch them in sickness ; yet every vag- 
abond who floats in hither, swears and swaggers, 
as if they were all his : and when they offer to cor- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 219 

rupt all these youth, we paying them round sums 
of money for it, and we get courage finally to say 
that we had rather not ; that industry and honesty 
are better than expert knavery — they turn upon us 
in great indignation with. Why don't you mind your 
own business — iv hat are you meddling with our affairs 
for? 

I will suppose a case. With much pains-taking, 
I have saved enough money to buy a little garden- 
spot. I put all around it a good fence — I put the 
spade into it and mellow the soil full deep ; I go to 
the nursery and pick out choice fruit trees — I send 
abroad and select the best seeds of the rarest vege- 
tables; and so my garden thrives. I know every 
inch of it, for I have watered every inch with sweat. 
One morning I am awakened by a mixed sound of 
sawing, digging, and delving; and looking out, I 
see a dozen men at work in my garden. I run 
down and find one man sawing out a huge hole in 
the fence. " My dear sir, what are you doing?" 
"Oh, this high fence is very troublesome to climb 
over; I am fixing an easier way for folks to get in." 
Another man has headed down several choice trees, 
and is putting in new grafts. "Sir, what are you 
changing the kind for?" " Oh, this kind don't suit 
me j I like a new kind." One man is digging up my 
beans, to plant cockles; another is rooting up my 



220 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

strawberries, to put in pursley; and another is 
destroying my currants, and gooseberries, and rasp- 
berries, to plant mustard and Jamestown weed. At 
last, I lose all patience, and cry out, " Well, gentle- 
men, this will never do. I will never tolerate this 
abominable imposition; you are ruining my gar- 
den." One of them says, "You old hypocritical 
bigot ! do mind your business, and let us enjoy our- 
selves. Take care of your house, and do not pry 
into our pleasures." 

Fellow-citizens! I own that no man could so 
invade your garden ; but men are allowed thus to 
invade our town, and destroy our children. You 
will let them evade your laws, to fleece and demor- 
alize you ; and you sit down under their railing, as 
. though you were the intruders ! — just as if the man, 
who drives a thief out of his house, ought to ask the 
rascaPs pardon for interfering with his little plans of 
pleasure and profit ! 

Every parent has a right — every citizen anc 
every minister has the same right, to expose traps, 
which men have to set them ; the same right to pre- 
vent mischief, which men have to plot it ; the same 
right to attack vice, which vice has to attack vir- 
tue ; a better right to save our sons and brothers, 
and companions, than artful men have to destroy 
them. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 221 

The necessity of amusement, is admitted on all 
hands. There is an appetite of the eye, of the ear, 
and of every sense, for which God has provided the 
material. Gaiety of every degree, this side of pue- 
rile levity, is wholesome to the body, to the mind, 
and to the morals. Nature is a vast repository of 
manly enjoyments. The magnitude of God's works 
is not less admirable than its exhilarating beauty. 
The rudest forms have something of beauty; the 
ruggedest strength is graced with some charm; the 
very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature, are 
attractive by qualities of beauty more than is neces- 
sary for mere utility. The sun could go down 
without gorgeous clouds; evening could advance 
without its evanescent brilliance ; trees might have 
flourished without symmetry ; flowers have existed 
without odor, and fruit without flavor. When I 
have journeyed through forests, where ten thousand 
shrubs and vines exist without apparent use; 
through prairies, whose undulations exhibit sheets 
of flowers innumerable, and absolutely dazzling tte 
eye with their prodigality of beauty— beauty, not a 
tithe of which is ever seen by man— I have said, it 
is plain that God is himself passionately fond of 
beauty, and the earth is his garden, as an acre is 
man's. God has made us like Himself, to be pleased 
by the universal beauty of the world. He has made 
19* 



222 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

provision in nature, in society, and in the family, for 
amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart 
, with the perpetual sunshine of delight. 

Upon this hroad earth, purfled with flowers, 
scented with odors, brilliant in colors, vocal with 
echoing and re-echoing melody, I take my stand 
against all demoralizing pleasure. Is it not enough 
that our Father's house is so full of dear delights, 
that we must wander prodigal to the swine-herd for 
husks, and to the slough for drink?— when the trees 
of God's heritage bend over our head, and solicit 
our hand to pluck the golden fruitage, must we still 
go in search of the apples of Sodom— outside fair, 
and inside ashes 1 

Men shall crowd to the Circus to hear clowns, 
and see rare feats of horsemanship ; but a bird may 
poise beneath the very sun, or flying downward, 
swoop from the high heaven; then flit with graceful 
ease hither and thither, pouring liquid song as if it 
were a perennial fountain of sound— no man cares 

for that. 

Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies are 
performing in every act; nations pitching headlong 
to their final catastrophe ; others, raising their youth- 
ful forms to begin the drama of their existence. 
The world of society is as full of exciting interest, 
as nature is full of beauty. The great dramatic 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 223 

throng of life is hustling along — the wise, the fool, 
the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the broken- 
hearted. Life mingles before us smiles and tears, 
sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as the spring 

mingles the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To 

i 
this vast Theatre which God hath builded, where 

stranger plays are seen than ever author writ, man 
seldom cares to come. When God dramatizes, when 
nations act, or all the human kind conspire to educe 
the vast catastrophe, men sleep and snore, and let 
the busy scene go on, unlooked, unthought upon ; 
and turn from all its varied magnificence to hunt 
out some candle-lighted hole and gaze at drunken 
ranters, or cry at the piteous virtue of harlots in dis- 
tress. It is my object then, not to withdraw the 
young from pleasure, but from unworthy pleasures ; 
not to lessen their enjoyments, but to increase them, 
by rejecting the counterfeit and the vile. 

Of gambling, I have already sufficiently spoken. 
Of cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and pugilistic con- 
tests, I need to speak but little. These are the des- 
perate excitements of debauched men • but no man 
becomes desperately criminal, until he has been 
genteelly criminal. No one spreads his sail upon 
such waters, at first ; these brutal amusements are 
but the gulf into which flow all the streams of crim- 
inal pleasures ; and they who embark upon the river, 



224 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

are sailing toward the gulf. Wretches who have 
waded all the depths of iniquity, and burned every 
passion to the socket, find in rage and blows and 
blood, the only stimulus of which they are suscep- 
tible. You are training yourselves to be just such 
wretches, if you are exhausting your passions in 
illicit indulgences. 

As it is impossible to analyze, separately, each 
vicious amusement proffered to the young, I am 
compelled to select two, each the representative of a 
clan. Thus, the reasonings applied to the amuse- 
ment of Racing, apply equally well to all violent 
amusements which congregate indolent and dissi- 
pated men, by ministering intense excitement. The 
reasonings applied to the Theatre, with some modi- 
fications, apply to the Circus, to promiscuous balls, 
to night-revelling, bacchanalian feasts, and to other 
similar indulgences. 

Many, who are not in danger, may incline to turn 
from these pages; they live in rural districts, in 
villages, 'or towns, and are out of the reach of 
jockeys, and actors, and gamblers. This is the very 
reason why you should read. We are such a mi- 
gratory, restless people, that our home is usually 
everywhere but at home; and almost every young 
man makes annual, or biennial visits to famous 
cities; conveying produce to market, or purchasing 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 225 

wares and goods. It is at such times that the young 
are in extreme danger; for they are particularly 
anxious, at such times, to appear at their full age. 
A young man is ashamed, in a great hotel, to seem 
raw and not to know the mysteries of the bar and 
of the town. They put on a very remarkable air, 
which is meant for ease; they affect profusion of 
expense ; they think it meet for a gentleman to 
know all that certain other city-gentlemen seem 
proud of knowing. As sober citizens are not found 
lounging at Hotels ; and the gentlemanly part of 
the travelling community are usually retiring, mod- 
est, and unnoticeable, — the young are left to come in 
contact chiefly with a very flash class of men who 
swarm about city-Restaurateurs and Hotels, — swoln 
clerks, crack sportsmen, epicures, and rich, green 
youth, seasoning. These are the most numerous 
class which engage the attention of the young. 
They bustle in the sitting room, or crowd the bar, 
assume the chief seats at the table, and play the petty 
lord in a manner so brilliant, as altogether to dazzle 
our poor country boy, who mourns at his deficient 
education, at the poverty of his rural oaths, and the 
meagerness of those illicit pleasures, which he for- 
merly nibbled at with mouselike stealth; and he 
sighs for these riper accomplishments. Besides, it 
is well known, that large commercial establishments 



226 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

have, residing at such hotels, well appointed clerks 
to draw customers to their counter. It is their busi- 
ness to make your acquaintance, to fish out the 
probable condition of your funds, to sweeten your 
temper with delicate tit-bits of pleasure ; to take 
you to the Theatre, and a little further oji, if need 
be ; to draw you in to a generous supper, and initiate 
you to the high life of men whose whole life is only 
the varied phases of lust, gastronomical or amorous. 

Besides these, there lurk in such places lynx-eyed 
procurers ; men who have an interest in your appe- 
tites ; who look upon a young man, with some 
.money, just as a butcher looks upon a bullock — a 
thing of so many pounds avoirdupois, of so much 
beef, so much tallow, and a hide. If you have no- 
thing, they will have nothing to do with you ; if you 
have means, they undertake to supply you with the 
disposition to use them. They know the city, they 
know its haunts, they know its secret doors, its 
blind passages, its spicy pleasures, its racy vices, 
clear down to the mud-slime of the very bottom. 

Meanwhile, the accustomed restraint of home cast 
off, the youth feels that he is unknown, and may 
do what he chooses, unexposed. There is, moreover, 
an intense curiosity to see many things of which 
he has long ago heard and wondered; and it is 
the very art and education of vice, to make itself 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 227 

attractive. It comes with garlands of roses about 
its brow, with nectar in its goblet, and love upon its 
tongue. 

If you have, beforehand, no settled opinions as to 
what is right and what is wrong ; if your judgment 
is now, for the first time, to be formed upon the 
propriety of your actions ; if you are not controlled 
by settled principles, there is scarcely a chance for 
your purity. 

For this purpose, then, I desire to discuss these 
things, that you may settle your opinions and prin- 
ciples before temptation assails you. As a ship is 
built upon the dry shore, which afterwards is to dare 
the storm and brave the sea, so would I build you 
staunch and strong, ere you be launched abroad 
upon life. 

I. Racing. This amusement justifies its exist- 
ence by the plea of utility. We will examine it 
upon its own ground. Who are the patrons of the 
Turf? — farmers? — laborers ?— men who are practi- 
cally the most interested in the improvement of 
stock? The unerring instinct of self-interest would 
lead these men to patronize the Course, if its utility 
were real. It is notorious that these are not the 
patrons of racing. It is sustained by two classes of 
men— gambling jockeys and jaded rich men. In 
England, and in our own country, where the turf- 




228 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

sports are freshest, they owe their existence entirely 
to the extraordinary excitement which they afford 
to dissipation, or to cloyed appetites. For those 
industrial purposes for which the horse is chiefly 
valuable, for roadsters, hacks, and cart-horses, what 
do the patrons of the turf care ? Their whole anx- 
iety is centred upon winning cups and stakes ; and 
that is incomparably the best blood which will run 
the longest space in the shortest time. The points 
required for this are not, and never will be, the points 
for substantial service. And it is notorious, that 
racing in England deteriorated the stock in such 
important respects, that the light-cavalry and dra- 
goon-service suffered severely, until dependence 
upon turf stables was abandoned. New England, 
where racing is unknown, is to this day the place 
where the horse exists in the finest qualities ; and 
for all economical purposes, Virginia and Kentucky 
must yield to New England. Except for the sole 
purpose of racing, an eastern horse brings a higher 
price than any other. 

The other class of patrons who sustain a Course 
are mere gambling jockeys. As crows to a corn- 
field, or vultures to their prey; as flies to summer- 
sweet, so to the annual races, flow the whole tribe 
of gamesters and pleasure-lovers. It is the Jerusa- 
lem of wicked men ; and thither the tribes go up, 






POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 229 

like Israel of old, but for a far different sacrifice. 
No form of social abomination is unknown or un- 
practised ; and if all the good that is claimed, and a 
hundred times more, were done to horses, it would 
be a dear bargain. To ruin men for the sake of im- 
proving horses; to sacrifice conscience and purity 
for the sake of good bones and muscles in a beast ; 
this is paying a little too much for good brutes. In- 
deed, the shameless immorality, the perpetual and 
growing dishonesty, the almost immeasurable secret 
villany of gentlemen of the turf, has alarmed and 
disgusted many stalwart racers, who, having no 
objection to some evil, are appalled at the very 
ocean of depravity which rolls before them. I ex- 
tract the words of one of the leading sportsmen 
of England. " How many fine domains have been 
shared among these hosts of rapacious sharks, dur- 
! ing the last two hundred years; and, unless the sys- 
j tern be altered, how many more are doomed to fall 
into the same gulf! For, we lament to say, the evil 
j has increased: all heretofore has been < tarts and 
i cheese-cakes' to the villanous proceedings of the last 
twenty years on the English turf." 

I will drop this barbarous amusement, with a few 
questions. 

What have you, young men, to do with the turf, 
admitting it to be what it claims, a school for horses ? 
20 



230 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

Are you particularly interested in that branch of 
learning ? 

Is it safe to accustom yourselves to such tremen- 
dous, excitement as that of racing ? 

Is the invariable company of such places of a kind 
which you ought to be found in ? — will races make 
you more moral? — more industrious? — more care- 
ful? — economical ? — trustworthy ? 

You who have attended them, what advice would 
you give a young man, a younger brother for in- 
stance, who should seriously ask if he had better 
attend ? 

I digress to say one word to women. When a 
Course was opened at Cincinnati, ladies would not 
attend it : when one was opened here, ladies would 
not attend it: For very good reasons — they were 
ladies. If it be said that they attend the Races at 
the South and in England, I reply, that they do a 
great many other things which you would not 
choose to do. 

Roman ladies could see hundreds of gladiators stab 

and hack each other — could you ? Spanish ladies 

can see savage bull-fights — would you? It is pos- 

, sible for a modest woman to countenance very ques- 

| tionable practices, where the customs of society and 

* the universal public opinion approve them. But 

no woman can set herself against public opinion, 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 231 

in favor of an immoral sport, without being herself 
immoral ; for, if \lrorse be wanting, it is immorality 
enough for a woman to put herself where her repu- 
tation will lose its suspiciousless lustre. 

II. The Theatre. Desperate efforts are made, 
year by year, to resuscitate this expiring evil. Its 
claims are put forth with vehemence. Let us exam- 
ine them. 

The drama cultivates the taste. Let the appeal be 
to facts. Let the roll of English literature be ex- 
plored — our Poets, Romancers, Historians, Essayists, 
Critics, and Divines — and for what part of their 
memorable writings are we indebted to the Drama ? 
If we except one period of our literature, the claim 
is wholly groundless ; and at this day, the truth is 
so opposite to the claim, that extravagance, affecta- 
tion, and rant, are proverbially denominated theat- 
rical. If agriculture should attempt to supersede 
the admirable implements of husbandry, now in use, 
by the primitive plough or sharpened sticks, it would 
not be more absurd than to advocate that clumsy 
machine of literature, the Theatre, by the side of 
the popular lecture, the pulpit, and the press. It is 
not congenial to our age or necessities. Its day is 
gone by — it is in its dotage, as might be suspected, 
from the weakness of the garrulous apologies which 
it puts forth. 






232 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

It is a school of morals. — Yes, doubtless ! So 
the guillotine is defended on the plea of humanity. 
Inquisitors declare their racks and torture-beds to be 
the instruments of love, affectionately admonishing 
the fallen of the error of their ways. The slave- 
trade has been defended on the plea of humanity, 
and slavery is now defended for its mercies. Were 
it necessary for any school or party, doubtless we 
should hear arguments to prove the Devil's' grace, 
and the utility of his agency among men. 

But, let me settle these impudent pretensions to 
Theatre-virtue, by the home thrust of a few plain 
questions. 

Will any of you who have been to Theatres, 
please to tell me whether virtue ever received impor- 
tant accessions from the gallery of Theatres ? 

Will you tell me whether the Pit is a place where 
an ordinarily modest man would love to seat his 
children % X 

Was ever a Theatre known where a prayer at 
the opening, and a prayer at the close, would not be 
tormentingly discordant? 

How does it happen, that in a school for morals, 
the teachers never learn their own lessons ? 

Would you allow a son or daughter to associate 
alone with actors or actresses 1 

Do these men who promote virtue so zealoush 



,V 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 233 

when actings take any part in public moral enter- 
prises, when their stage dresses are off? ^y^ 

Which would surprise you most, to see actors 
steadily at Church, or to see Christians steadily at a 
Theatre? Would not both strike you as singular 
incongruities ? 

What is the reason that loose and abandoned men 
abhor religion in a Church, and love it so much in a 
Theatre? 

Since the Theatre is the handmaid of virtue, why 
are drinking houses so necessary to its neighbor- 
hood, yet so offensive to Churches i The trustees 
of the Tremont Theatre in Boston, publicly protested 
against an order of council forbidding liquor to be 
sold on the premises, on the ground that it was 
impossible to support the Theatre without it. 

I am told that Christians do attend the Theatres. 
Then I will tell them the story of the Ancients. A 
holy monk reproached the devil for stealing a young 
man who was found at the Theatre. He promptly 
replied, "I found him on my premises, and took 
him." 

But, it is said, if Christians would take Theatres 
in hand, instead of abandoning them to loose men, 
they might become the handmaids of religion. 

The Church has had an intimate acquaintance 
with the Theatre for eighteen hundred years. Dur- 
20* 



234 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

ing that period, every available agent for the diffu- 
sion of morality has been earnestly tried. The 
Drama has been tried. The result is, that familiar- 
ity has bred contempt and abhorrence. » If, after so 
j long and thorough an acquaintance, the Church 
'i stands the mortal enemy of Theatres, the testimony 
is conclusive, t It is the evidence of generations 
speaking by the most sober, thinking, and honest 
men. Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute any 
longer the precincts of the Church, with impudent 
proposals of alliance. When the Church needs an 
alliance it will not look for it in the kennel. Ah ! 
what a blissful scene would that be — the Church 
and Theatre imparadised in each other's arms! 
What a sweet conjunction would be made, could we 
build our Churches so as to preach in the morning, 
and play in them by night ! And how melting it 
would be, beyond the love of David and Jonathan, 
to see minister and actor in loving embrace; one 
slaying Satan by direct thrusts of plain preaching, 
and the other sucking his very life out by the en- 
chantment of the Drama ! To this millennial scene 
of Church and Theatre, I only suggest a single 
improvement : that the vestry be enlarged to a ring 
for a Circus, when not wanted for prayer-meetings ; 
that the Sabbath-school room should be furnished 
with card- tables, and useful texts of scripture might 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 235 

be printed on the cards, for the pious meditations of 
gamblers during the intervals of play and worship. 

But if these places are put down, men will go to 
worse ones. Where will they find worse ones? Are 
those who go to the Theatre, the Circus, the Race- 
course, the men who abstain from worse places? 
It is notorious that the crowd of theatre-goers are 
vomited up from these worse places. It is noto- 
rious that the Theatre is the door to all the sinks of 
iniquity. It is through this infamous place that the 
young learn to love those vicious associates and 
practices to which, else, they would have been 
strangers. Half the victims of the gallows and of 
the Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools for 
morals were to them the gate of debauchery, the 
porch of pollution, the vestibule of the very house 
of Death. 

The Drama makes one acquainted with human 
life, and with nature. It is too true. There is 
scarcely an evil incident to human life, which, may 
not be fully learned at the Theatre. Here flourishes 
every variety of wit — ridicule of sacred things, 
burlesques of religion, and licentious double-enten- 
dres. Nowhere can so much of this lore be learned, 
in so short a time, as at the Theatre. There one 
learns how pleasant a thing is vice; amours are 
consecrated; license is prospered; and the young 



236 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

come away alive to the glorious liberty of conquest 
and lust. But the stage is not the only place about 
the Drama where human nature is learned. In the 
Boxes the young may make the acquaintance of 
those who abhor home and domestic quiet ; of those 
who glory in profusion and obtrusive display; of 
those who expend all, and more than their earnings, 
upon gay clothes and jewelry ; of those who think 
it no harm to borrow their money without leave from 
their employer's till; of those who despise vulgar 
appetite, but affect polished and genteel licentious- 
ness. Or, he may go to the Pit, and learn the 
whole round of villain-life, from masters in the art. 
He may sit down among thieves, blood-loving 
scoundrels, swindlers, broken-down men of plea- 
sure — the coarse, the vulgar, the debauched, the 
inhuman, the infernal. Or, if still more of human 
nature is wished, he can learn yet more; for the 
Theatre epitomizes every degree of corruption. Let 
the virtuous young scholar go to the Gallery, and 
learn there, decency, modesty, and refinement, among 
the quarrelling, drunken, ogling, mincing, brutal 
women of the brothel ! Ah ! there is no place like 
the Theatre for learning human nature ! A young 
man can gather up more experimental knowledge 
here in a week, than elsewhere in half a year. But 
I wonder that the Drama should ever confess the 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 237 

fact; and yet more, that it should lustily plead in 
self-defence, that Theatres teach men so much of 
human nature! Here are brilliant bars, to teach 
the young to drink ; here are gay companions, to 
undo in half an hour the scruples formed by an 
education of years ; here are pimps of pleasure, to 
delude the brain with bewildering sophisms of 
license ; here is pleasure, all flushed in its gayest, 
boldest, most fascinating forms ; and few there be 
who can resist its wiles, and fewgx yet who can 
yield to them and escape ruin.^TIf you would per- 
vert the taste — go to the Theatre. If you would 
imbibe false views — go to the Theatre. If you 
would efface as speedily as possible all qualms of 
conscience — go to the Theatre. If you would put 
yourself irreconcilably against the spirit of virtue 
and religion — go to the Theatre. If you would be 
infected with each particular vice in the catalogue 
of Depravity — go to the Theatre. Let parents, who 
wish to make their children weary of home and 
quiet domestic enjoyments, take them to the Theatre. 
If it be desirable for the young to loathe industry 
and didactic reading, and burn for fierce excitements, 
and seek them by stealth or through pilferings, if 
need be — then send them to the Theatre. It is noto- 
rious that the bill of fare at these temples of pleasure 
is made up to the taste of the lower appetites ; that 



238 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

low comedy, and lower farce, running into absolute 
obscenity, are the only means of filling a house. 
Theatres which should exhibit nothing but the 
classic Drama, would exhibit it to empty seats. 
They must be corrupt, to live ; and those who attend 
them will be corrupted. 

Let me turn your attention to several reasons 
which should incline every young man to forswear 
such criminal amusements. 

I. The first reason is, their waste of time. I do 
not mean that they waste only the time consumed 
while you are within them; but they make you 
waste your time afterwards. You will go once, and 
wish to go again ; you will go twice, and seek it a 
third time ; you will go a third time, — a fourth ; and 
whenever the bill flames, you will be seized with a 
restlessness and craving to go, until the appetite 
will become a passion. You will then waste your 
nights : your mornings being heavy, melancholy, 
and stupid, you will waste them. Your day will 
next be confused and crowded : your duties poorly 
executed or deferred ; habits of arrant shiftlessness 
will ensue ; and day by day, industry will grow 
tiresome, and leisure sweeter, until you are a waster 
of time — an idle man ; and if not a rogue, you will 
be a fortunate exception. 

II. You ought not to countenance these things, 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 239 

because they will waste your money. Young gentle- 
men ! squandering is as shameful as hoarding. A 
fool can throw away, and a fool can lock up ; but it 
is a wise man, who, neither parsimonious nor pro- 
fuse, steers the middle course of generous economy 
and frugal liberality. A young man, at first, thinks 
that all he spends at such places, is the ticket-price 
of the Theatre, or the small bet on the races ; and 
this he knows is not much. But this is certainly not 
the whole bill — nor half. 

First, you pay your entrance. But there are a 
thousand petty luxuries which one must not neglect, 
or custom will call him niggard. You must buy 
your cigars, and your friend's. You must buy your 
juleps, and treat in your turn. You must occasion- 
ally wait on your lady, and she must be comforted 
with divers confections. You cannot go to such 
places in homely working dress ; new and costlier 
clothes must be bought. All your companions have 
jewelry, — you will want a ring, or a seal, or a golden 
watch, or an ebony cane, a silver toothpick, or quiz- 
zing glass. Thus, item presses upon item, and in 
the year a long bill runs up of money spent for little 
trifles. 

But if all this money could buy you off from the 
yet worse effects, the bargain would not be so dear. 
But compare, if you please, this mode of expendi- 



240 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

ture with the principle of your ordinary expense. 
In all ordinary and business-transactions you get an 
equivalent for your money, — either food for support, 
or clothes for comfort, or permanent property. But 
when a young man has spent one or two hundred 
dollars for the Theatre, Circus, Races, Balls, and 
revelling, what has he to show for it at the end of 
the year? Nothing at all good, and much that is 
bad. You sink your money as really as if you 
threw it into the sea ; and you do it in such a way 
that you form habits of careless expense. You lose 
all sense of the value of property ; and when a man 
sees no value in property, he will see no necessity 
for labor ; and when he is lazy, and careless of prop- 
erty, both, he will be dishonest. Thus, a habit 
which seems innocent — the habit of trifling with 
property — often degenerates to worthlessness, indo- 
lence, and roguery. 

III. Such pleasures are incompatible with your 
ordinary pursuits. 

The very way to ruin an honest business is to be 
ashamed of it, or to put alongside of it something 
which a man loves better. There can be no indus- 
trial calling so exciting as the Theatre, the Circus, 
and the Races. If you wish to make your real 
business very stupid and hateful, visit such places. 
After the glare of the Theatre has dazzled your 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 241 

eyes, your blacksmith-shop will look smuttier than 
ever it did before. After you have seen stalwart 
heroes pounding their antagonists, you will find it a 
dull business to pound iron ; and a valiant appren- 
tice who has seen such gracious glances of love and 
such rapturous kissing of hands, will hate to dirty 
his heroic fingers with mortar, or by rolling felt 
on the hatter's board. If a man had a homely, but 
most useful wife — patient, kind, intelligent, hopeful 
in sorrow, and cheerful in prosperity, but yet very 
plain, very homely, — would he be wise to bring 
under his roof a fascinating and artful beauty? 
would the contrast, and her wiles, make him love 
his own wife better ? Young gentlemen, your wives 
are your industrial callings? These raree-shows 
are artful jades, dressed up on purpose to purloin 
your affections. Let no man be led to commit 
adultery with a Theatre, against the rights of his 
own trade. 

, IV. Another reason why you should let alone 
these deceitful pleasures is, that they will engage 
you in bad company. To the Theatre, the Ball, 
the Circus, the Race-course, the gaming-table, resort 
all the idle, the dissipated, the rogues, the licen- 
tious, the epicures, the gluttons, the artful jades, 
the immodest prudes, the joyous, the worthless, the 
refuse. When you go, you will not, at first, take 
2J 



242 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

introduction to them all, but to those nearest like 
yourself; by them the way will be opened to others. 
And a very great evil has befallen a young man, 
when wicked men feel that they have a right to 
his acquaintance. When I see a gambler slapping 
a young mechanic on the back; or a lecherous 
scoundrel suffusing a young man's cheek by a story 
at which, despite his blushes, he yet laughs ; I 
know the youth has been guilty of criminal indis- 
cretion, or these men could not approach him thus. 
That is a brave and strong heart that can stand up 
pure in a company of artful wretches. When 
wicked men mean to seduce a young man, so tre- 
mendous are the odds in favor of practiced expe- 
rience against innocence, that there is not one chance 
in a thousand, if the young man lets them approach 
him. Let every young man remember that he car- 
ries, by nature, a breast of passions just such as bad 
men have. With youth they slumber; but tempta- 
tion can wake them, bad men can influence them; 
they know the road, they know how to serenade 
the heart; how to raise the sash, and elope with 
each passion. There is but one resource for inno- 
cence among men or women; and that is, an em- 
bargo upon all commerce of bad men. Bar the 
window ! — bolt the door ! — nor answer their strain, 
if they charm never so wisely ! In no other way can 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 243 

you be safe. So well am I assured of the power of 
bad men to seduce the erring purity of man, that I 
pronounce it next to impossible for man or woman 
to escape, if they permit bad men to approach and 
dally with them. Oh ! there is more than magic in 
temptation, when it beams down upon the heart of 
man, like the sun upon a morass ! At the noon- 
tide-hour of purity, the mists shall rise and wreath 
a thousand fantastic forms of delusion ; and a sudden 
freak of passion, a single gleam of the imagination, 
one sudden rush of the capricious heart, and the 
resistance of years may be prostrated in a moment, 
the heart entered by the besieging enemy, its rooms 
sought out, and every lovely affection rudely seized 
by the invader's lust, and given to ravishment and 
to ruin ! 

V. Putting together in one class, all gamblers, 
circus-riders, actors and racing jockeys, I pronounce 
them to be men who live off of society without 
returning any useful equivalent for their support. 
At the most lenient sentence, they are a band of gay 
idlers. They do not throw one cent into the stock 
of public good. They do not make shoes, or hats, 
or houses, or harness, or anything else that is 
useful. A hostler is useful; he performs a neces- 
sary office. A scullion is useful ; somebody must 
act his part. A street-sweeper, a chimney-sweep, the 



244 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

seller of old clothes, a scavenger, a tinker, a boot- 
black — all these men are respectable ; for though 
their callings are very humble, they are founded on 
the real wants of society. The bread which such 
men eat, is the representation of what they have 
done for society ; not the bread of idleness, but of 
usefulness. But what do pleasure-mongers do for 
a living? — what do they invent? — what do they 
make? — what do they repair? — what do they for 
the mind, for the body, for man, or child, or beast ? 
The dog that gnaws a refuse bone, pays for it in 
barking at a thief. The cat that purrs its gratitude 
for a morsel of meat, will clear our house of rats. 
But what do we get in return for supporting whole 
loads of play-mongers, and circus-clowns? They 
eat, they drink, they giggle, they grimace, they strut 
in gairish clothes — and what else ? They have not 
afforded even useful amusement; they are profes- 
sional laugh-makers ; their trade is comical or tragi- 
cal buffoonery — the trade of tickling men. We do 
not feel any need of them, before they come ; and 
when they leave, the only effects resulting from 
their visits are, unruly boys, aping apprentices, and 
unsteady workmen. 

Now, upon principles of mere political economy, 
is it wise to support a growing class of improvident 
idlers? If at the top of society, the government 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 245 

should erect a class of favored citizens, and pamper 
their idleness with fat pensions, the indignation of 
the whole community would break out against such 
privileged aristocrats. But we have, at the bottom 
of society, a set of wandering, jesting, dancing, fid- 
dling aristocrats, whom we support for the sake of 
their capers, grins, and caricatures upon life, and 
no one seems to think this an evil. 

VI. But even this is cheap and wise, compared 
with the evil which I shall mention. If these mor- 
ality-teachers could guarantee us against all evil 
from their doings, we might pay their support and 
think it a cheap bargain. The direct and neces- 
sary effect of their pursuit, however, is to demoralize 
men. 

Those who defend Theatres would scorn to admit 
actors into their society. It is within the knowledge 
of all, that men, who thus cater for public plea- 
sure, are excluded from respectable society. 'The 
general fact is not altered by the exceptions^ — and 
honorable exceptions there are. But where there 
is one Siddons, and one Ellen Tree, and one Fanny 
Kemble, how many hundred actresses are there who 
dare not venture within modest society? Where 
there is one Garrick and Sheridan, how many thou- 
sand licentious wretches are there, whose acting is 
but a means of sensual indulgence ? In the support 
21* 



246 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

of gamblers, circus-riders, actors, and racing-jock- 
eys, a Christian and industrious people are guilty 
of supporting mere mischief-makers — men whose 
very heart is diseased, and whose sores exhale con- 
tagion to all around them. We pay moral assas- 
sins to stab the purity of our children. We warn 
our sons of temptation, and yet plant the seeds 
which shall bristle with all the spikes and thorns of 
the worst temptation. If to this strong language, 
you answer, that these men are generous and jovial, 
that their very business is to please, that they do 
not mean to do harm, — I reply, that I do not charge 
them with trying to produce immorality, but with 
pursuing a course which produces it, whether they 
try or not. An evil example does harm by its own 
liberty, without asking leave. Moral disease, like 
the plague, is contagious, whether the patient wishes 
it or not. A vile man infects his children in spite 
of himself. Criminals make criminals, just as taint 
makes taint, disease makes disease, plagues make 
plagues. Those who run the gay round of plea- 
sure cannot help dazzling the young, confounding 
their habits, and perverting their morals — it is the 
very nature of their employment. 

These demoralizing professions could not be sus- 
tained but by the patronage of moral men. Where 
do the clerks, the apprentices, the dissipated, get their 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, 247 

money which buys an entrance? From whom is 
that money drained, always, in every land, which 
supports vice ? Unquestionably from the good, the 
laborious, the careful. The skill, the enterprise, the 
labor, the good morals of every nation, are always 
taxed for the expenses of vice. Jails are built oul 
of honest men's earnings. Courts are supported 
from peaceful men's property. Penitentiaries are 
built by the toil of virtue. Crime never pays its 
own way. Vice has no hands to work, no head to 
calculate. Its whole faculty is to corrupt and to 
waste ; and good men, directly or indirectly, foot the 
bill 

At this time, when we are waiting in vain for the 
return of that bread which we wastefully cast upon 
the waters ; when, all over the sea, men are fishing 
up the wrecks of those argosies, v and full freighted 
fortunes, which foundered in the sad storm of recent 
times, — some question might be asked about the 
economy of vice; the economy of paying for our 
sons' idleness ; the economy of maintaining a whole 
lazy profession of gamblers, racers, actresses, and 
actors, — human, equine and belluine : — whose er- 
rand is mischief, and luxury, and license, and gig- 
gling folly. It ought to be asked of men who 
groan at a tax to pay their honest foreign debts, 



248 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

whether they can be taxed to pay the bills of moun- 
tebanks?* 

It is astonishing how little the influence of those 
professions has been considered, which exert them- 
selves mainly to delight the sensual feelings of men. 
That whole race of men, whose camp is the Thea- 
tre, the Circus, the Turf, or the Gaming-table, is a 
race whose instinct is destruction, who live to cor- 
rupt, and live off of the corruption which they make. 
For their support, we sacrifice annual hecatombs of 
youthful victims. Even sober Christian men, look 



* We cannot pay for honest loans, but we can pay Elssler hundreds of 
thousands for being an airy sylph! America can pay vagabond -fiddlers, 
strumpet-dancers, fashionable actors, dancing-horses, and boxing-men! 
Heaven forbid that these should want ! — but to pay honest debts,— indeed, 
indeed, we have honorable scruples of conscience about that! ! 

Let our foreign creditors dismiss their fears, and forgive us the commer- 
cial debt ; write no more drowsy letters about public faith ; let them write 
spicy comedies, and send over fiddlers, and dancers, and actors, and sing- 
ers ;*— they will soon collect the debt and keep us good-natured ! After 
every extenuation — hard times, deficient currency, want of market, &c, 
there is a deeper reason than these at the bottom of our inert indebtedness. 
Living among the body of the people, and having nothing to lose or gain 
by my opinions, I must say plainly, that the community are not sensitive 
to the disgrace of flagrant public bankruptcy ; they do not seem to care 
whether their public debt be paid or not. I perceive no enthusiasm on that 
subject: it is not a topic for either party, nor of anxious private conversa- 
tion. A profound indebtedness, ruinous to our credit and to our morals, 
is allowed to lie at the very bottom of the abyss of dishonest indifference. 

Men love to be taxed for their lusts ; there is an open exchequer for 
licentiousness, and for giddy pleasure. We grow suddenly saving, when 
benevolence asks alms, or justice duns for debts ; we dole a pittance to 
sup pliant creditors, to be rid of their clamor. But let the divine Fanny, 
with evolutions extremely efficacious upon the feelings, fire the enthusiasm 
of a whole Theatre of men, whose applauses rise— as she does ; let this 
courageous dancer, almost literally true to nature, display her adventurous 
feats before a thousand men, and the very miser will turn spendthrift ; 
the land which will not pay its honest creditors, will enrich a strolling 
danseuse, and rain down upon the stage a stream of golden boxes, or 
golden coin, wreaths and rosy billet-doux. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 249 

smilingly upon the gairish outside of these train- 
bands of destruction ; and while we see the results 
to be, uniformly, dissipation, idleness, dishonesty, 
vice and crime, still they lull us with the lying 
lyric of " classic drama" and " human life" " moral- 
ity" "poetry" and " divine comedy " 

Disguise it as you will, these men of pleasure are. 
the world over, corrupters of youth. Upon no 
principle of kindness can we tolerate them ; no ex- 
cuse is bold enough; we can take bail from none 
of their weaknesses — it is not safe to have them 
abroad even upon excessive bail. You might as 
well take bail of lions, and allow scorpions to breed 
in our streets for a suitable license; or for a tax 
indulge assassins. Men whose life is given to evil 
pleasures are, to ordinary criminals, what a univer- 
sal pestilence is to a local disease. They fill the air, 
pervade the community, and bring around every 
youth an atmosphere of death. Corrupters of youth 
have no mitigation of their baseness. Their gener- 
osity avails nothing, their knowledge nothing, their 
varied accomplishments nothing. These are only 
so many facilities for greater evil. Is a serpent less 
deadly, because his burnished scales shine? Shall 
a dove praise and court the vulture, because he has 
such glossy plumage ? The more accomplishments 
a bad man has, the more dangerous is he ; — they 



250 . POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

are the garlands which cover up the knife with 
which he will stab. There is no such thing as good 
corrupters. You might as well talk of a mild and 
pleasant murder, a very lenient assassination, a 
grateful stench, or a pious devil. We denounce 
them ; for it is our nature to loathe perfidious cor- 
ruption. We have no compunction to withhold 
us. We mourn over a torn and bleeding lamb : but 
who mourns the wolf Avhich rent it? We weep for 
despoiled innocence ; but who sheds a tear for the 
savage fiend who plucks away the flower of virtue? 
We shudder and pray for the shrieking victim of 
the Inquisition; but who would spare the hoary 
Inquisitor, before whose shriveled form the piteous 
maid implores relief in vain ? Even thus, we pal- 
liate the sins of generous youth ; and their downfall 
is our sorrow : but for their destroyers, for the cor- 
rupters of youth, who practise the infernal chemis- 
try of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in vice — 
we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor patience. We 
lift our heart to Him who beareth the iron rod of 
vengeance, and pray for the appointed time of judg- 
ment. Ye miscreants ! think ye that ye are growing 
tall, and walking safely, because God hath forgot- 
ten? The bolt shall yet smite you! you shall be 
heard as the falling of an oak in the silent forest — 
the vaster its growth, the more terrible its resound- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 251 

ing downfall ! Oh ! thou corrupter of youth ! I 
would not take thy death, for all the pleasure of 
thy guilty life, a thousand fold. Thou shalt draw 
near to the shadow of death. To the Christian, 
these shades are the golden haze which heaven's 
light makes, when it meets the earth and mingles 
with its shadows. But to thee, these shall be shad- 
ows full of phantom-shapes. Images of terror in the 
Future shall dimly rise and beckon; — the ghastly 
deeds of the Past shall stretch out their skinny 
hands to push thee forward ! Thou shall not die 
unattended. Despair shall mock thee. Agony shall 
tender to thy parched lips her Aery cup. Remorse 
shall feel for thy heart, and rend it open. Good 
men shall breathe freer at thy death, and utter 
thanksgiving when thou art gone. Men shall place 
thy grave-stone as a monument and testimony that 
a plague is stayed ; no tear shall wet it, no mourner 
linger there ! And, as borne on the blast thy guilty 
spirit whistles toward the gate of hell, the hideous 
shrieks of those whom thy hand hath destroyed, 
shall pierce thee — hell's first welcome. In the bosom 
of that everlasting storm which rains perpetual 
misery in hell, shalt thou, corrupter of youth ! be 
forever hidden from our view : and may God wipe 
out the very thoughts of thee from our memory. 



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